Deccani
Deccani. The Deccan Plateau in south central India coincides with what used to be the princely state of Hyderabad, until 1948 ruled by the Sunni Muslim dynasty of Asaf Jahs (the nizams of Hyderabad). Its Muslim inhabitants, now citizens of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Mysore, and Maharashtra, share to a great extent a common and distinctive heritage and culture.
Muslims have always been a small minority of the population -- never more than twelve percent. However, from the fourteenth century until 1948, they ruled the Deccan. Since its very beginning, Muslim rule in the Deccan largely depended on the immigration of Muslims from other Islamic countries. Local converts as well as settlers from north India, who called themselves Deccanis, competed with foreigners, soldiers, learned men and adventurers from Central Asia, Iran and their successors at Bijapur, Bidar, Berar, Ahmadnagar and Golconda. The more recent Muslim immigrants from north India are called “Hindustanis.” Large groups of Pushtun served in the nizam’s army and police force. The Deccan also has its share of Gujarati Memons, Khojas and Bohras as well as Ahmadis and Wahhabis.
Those Arabs who first arrived in the eighteenth century to act as bodyguards for local rulers constituted a unique settlement. Their jemadars (military chiefs) were not only formidable soldiers but also prosperous moneylenders who maintained their own courts of justice and jails for defaulting debtors. Today pure Arabs (usul) are rare. Their descendants, offsprings of mixed marriage, termed mawalud, form a community which maintains its identity in dress, customs and language (now a corrupted form of Arabic). These Muslim groups have generally become an integral part of the region’s Muslim urban communities in such cities as Gulbarga, Nizamabad and Hyderabad, where they constitute almost 37 percent of the cities’ populations.
As a predominantly urban community, the Muslims constituted the ruling class and dominated government and military services. They were also found in trade and commerce. The lower Muslim class was employed by the wealthy landlords (jagirdar) in Hyderabad. Under the last resident nizam, Osman Ali Khan (1911-1948), Muslim dominance in the services and the army increased dramatically.
In 1948, the newly independent government of India forcibly removed the Muslim dynasty of Asaf Jahs. This event had a significant effect on the political, cultural and socioeconomic condition of the Deccani Muslims. A considerable number of civil servants, politicians, landlords and members of the commercial class emigrated to Pakistan. Those who stayed faced the necessity of adjusting to radically changed circumstances. The Muslims, used to thinking of themselves as rulers of the state, now had to learn how to be a minority under a Hindu majority government.
The political revolution that followed the invasion of Hyderabad by Indian troops greatly deprived the middle and lower class Muslims of their sources of patronage of power. The abolition of the jagirdars by the Hyderabad Military Government in 1949 eliminated the landlords. Many of these families, totallly unprepared for this development, were plunged into destitution and despair.
Muslims have always been a small minority of the population -- never more than twelve percent. However, from the fourteenth century until 1948, they ruled the Deccan. Since its very beginning, Muslim rule in the Deccan largely depended on the immigration of Muslims from other Islamic countries. Local converts as well as settlers from north India, who called themselves Deccanis, competed with foreigners, soldiers, learned men and adventurers from Central Asia, Iran and their successors at Bijapur, Bidar, Berar, Ahmadnagar and Golconda. The more recent Muslim immigrants from north India are called “Hindustanis.” Large groups of Pushtun served in the nizam’s army and police force. The Deccan also has its share of Gujarati Memons, Khojas and Bohras as well as Ahmadis and Wahhabis.
Those Arabs who first arrived in the eighteenth century to act as bodyguards for local rulers constituted a unique settlement. Their jemadars (military chiefs) were not only formidable soldiers but also prosperous moneylenders who maintained their own courts of justice and jails for defaulting debtors. Today pure Arabs (usul) are rare. Their descendants, offsprings of mixed marriage, termed mawalud, form a community which maintains its identity in dress, customs and language (now a corrupted form of Arabic). These Muslim groups have generally become an integral part of the region’s Muslim urban communities in such cities as Gulbarga, Nizamabad and Hyderabad, where they constitute almost 37 percent of the cities’ populations.
As a predominantly urban community, the Muslims constituted the ruling class and dominated government and military services. They were also found in trade and commerce. The lower Muslim class was employed by the wealthy landlords (jagirdar) in Hyderabad. Under the last resident nizam, Osman Ali Khan (1911-1948), Muslim dominance in the services and the army increased dramatically.
In 1948, the newly independent government of India forcibly removed the Muslim dynasty of Asaf Jahs. This event had a significant effect on the political, cultural and socioeconomic condition of the Deccani Muslims. A considerable number of civil servants, politicians, landlords and members of the commercial class emigrated to Pakistan. Those who stayed faced the necessity of adjusting to radically changed circumstances. The Muslims, used to thinking of themselves as rulers of the state, now had to learn how to be a minority under a Hindu majority government.
The political revolution that followed the invasion of Hyderabad by Indian troops greatly deprived the middle and lower class Muslims of their sources of patronage of power. The abolition of the jagirdars by the Hyderabad Military Government in 1949 eliminated the landlords. Many of these families, totallly unprepared for this development, were plunged into destitution and despair.
Deccan Sultans
Deccan Sultans. Rulers of six Indo-Muslim sultanates between the fourteenth and late seventeenth centuries in the Deccan plateau of India. Each of the Deccan sultanates evolved distinctive cultures that absorbed and modified cultural elements deriving from both Indian and Southwest Asian traditions.
The Deccan plateau comprises the upper portion of peninsular India, stretching from the range of mountains just inland from the west coast to the Bay of Bengal in the east, and from the Vindhya Mountains in the north to the Tungabhadra River in the south. This area had already been substantially hinduized before the arrival of Muslim influences, with three vernacular language regions -- Marathi, Telugu, and Kannada -- clearly emerging from about the twelfth century. Islamic influence in the plateau proper commenced in 1296 when Ala ud-Din Khalji, a Turkish officer serving the Delhi sultanate, raided and sacked the Yadava capital of Devagiri in the Marathi country. This was followed by a series of military incursions in the early fourteenth century, culminating in the Delhi sultanate’s formal annexation of the Marathi-speaking northern Deccan in 1318. The whole period from 1296 to 1347 was thus one in which Turkish or Indo-Turkish settlers, adventurers, soldiers, saints, and scholars migrated into the Deccan, forming as it were the cutting edge of the Delhi sultanate’s expanding military and cultural frontier.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the Delhi sultanate ceased to exercise its authority over the class of transplanted northerners in the Deccan who, settled in a region far from their homelands, began to feel a sense of their own cultural and political autonomy. Led by one Isma‘il Mukh, these settlers declared their independence from the Delhi sultanate in 1345, and two years later they established the first independent sultanate in the Deccan. This was the Bahmani kingdom, named after its first sultan, Ala ud-Din Bahman Shah. Lasting from 1347 to 1526, this dynasty of kings managed to establish its hegemony over the entire Deccan plateau, at its height extending its domain from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. This was accomplished in part from an efficient administrative system that used the same basic formula of success that was found in most Indo-Muslim sultanates: on the civil side, the Bahmani rulers managed to appropriate the services of the existing class of Hindu land revenue collectors, while on the military side, it combined a central body of crack troops personally loyal to the sultan with a decentralized network of officer-nobles who were assigned territorial administration in return for maintaining irregular troops.
This combination of military systems, especially when backed up by infusions of cavalry horses from Central Asia or through the port of Goa, proved extremely effective in dislodging local Hindu princes from power. But the system also contained the seeds of its own demise, as local commanders possessing local bases of power could, like Isma‘il Mukh, entertain the possibility of rebelling against the center and establishing new, independent sultanates. In time, in fact, the governors of the more important Bahmani provinces did just that, and by the late fifteenth century five independent sultanates had broken off from the disintegrating parent Bahmani sultanate. These were the Imad Shahi kingdom of Berar (1460-1574) in the northern part of the former Bahmani domain, the Barid Shahi kingdom of Bidar (1487-1619) in the central Deccan, the Nizam Shahi kingdom of Ahmadnagar (1490-1633) in the northwest, the Adil Shahi kingdom of Bijapur (1490-1686) in the southwest, and the Qutb Shahi kingdom of Golconda (1496-1687) in the eastern Deccan. The first two, smaller and weaker, were absorbed by their neighbors, whereas the last three were more powerful and were each in turn eventually absorbed by the supreme power of seventeenth century India, the Mughal Empire.
One of the central social problems of the Bahmani sultans, inherited too by each of the successor kingdoms, stemmed from administrative necessity. Reluctant to entrust their upper civil and military bureaucracies to Hindus, most sultanates sought Muslim immigrants from either North India or Southwest Asia to meet their staffing needs. But once recruited, these fresh immigrants tended not to assimilate easily with older classes descended from earlier migrants, and in fact often affected a sense of superiority over the latter. Thus, in the course of the fifteenth century two rival social groups emerged within the ranks of the ruling class: the “foreigners” (called afaqi) and the Deccanis. Whereas the former were often Iranian, spoke Persian, and were Shi‘a Muslims, the latter considered themselves natives of the Deccan, spoke a proto-Urdu language called Dakhni, and were usually Sunni Muslims. The poisonous animosity that existed between these two classes of ruling Muslims occasionally erupted in armed conflict and formed another cause of the political decline of the Deccan sultanates. Moreover, the Shi‘a orientation of the foreigners was ultimately to provide the Mughal emperor Aurangzib, a devout Sunni, with a pretext for waging disastrous wars against the last surviving sultanates, Bijapur and Golconda, in the late seventeenth century.
The contemporary Persian chronicles that form our primary sources for the history of these sultanates are replete with narratives of their various military affairs and political intrigues. First, there were the wars waged by two sultanates, Bijapur and Ahmadnagar, against the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Vastly superior Portuguese naval power decided most conflicts in the Europeans’ favor, resulting in the establishment of Portuguese coastal enclaves such as in Goa, which was seized from Bijapur in 1511. More typical were the civil wars that plagued all five successor sultanates throughout their history. Rulers owed their political existence to their sheer military capacity to wrest independence from former overlords and to maintain that independence against the encroachments of their neighbors. Consequently, the sultanates were always jockeying for position, with challenges to the control of key hill-forts typically touching off costly wars between them. The most disastrous wars for those sultanates that survived into the seventeenth century, however, were those waged against the Mughal Empire. After absorbing Malwa and Gujarat into the Mughal Empire, the emperor Akbar began putting pressure on the Nizam Shahi kingdom of Ahmadnagar in the 1590s, and, though heroically defended first by the queen Chand Bibi and later by the Abyssinian Malik Ambar, the kingdom eventually fell to Mughal arms in 1633. The same fate was to befall Bijapur and Golconda later in that century.
Additionally, there were the wars waged by the Deccan sultanates against the powerful Hindu state to the south, Vijayanagara. Ever since 1296, Indo-Turkish pressure from North India had forced Telugu and Marathi speaking Hindu warrior groups from the northern Deccan to migrate to the south, where they re-established themselves as warrior states armed with an explicitly Hindu ideological orientation. The most important of these, Vijayanagara, was founded in 1336 and established an immense capital city of the same name along the banks of the Tungabhadra River, which formed a bulwark against the further southward expansion of Indo-Turkish power. Eight major wars were fought between Bahmani and Vijayanagara armies between 1349 and 1481. After the fall of the Bahmani dynasty, its successor states continued this tradition of hostility until 1565, when Sultan Ali Adil Shah I of Bijapur forged an alliance of Deccan sultanates that managed to defeat the Hindu state and sack its great capital city in the Battle of Talikota.
The cultural traditions of the Deccan sultanates were shaped by two factors: their desire to recruit Muslim administrators, soldiers, Sufis, and scholars from Iran and Arab Southwest Asia, to which they looked for cultural inspiration, and their tendency over time to adopt local Marathi, Telugu, or Kannada customs in the area of speech, dress, diet, art, and architecture. Thus, for example, in the reigns of Sultan Firuz Bahmani (r. 1397-1422) and especially his son Ahmad Bahmani (r. 1422-1436), foreigners, mainly Persians, were actively recruited and rapidly filled ranking social and political positions. By the sixteenth and, especially, the seventeenth centuries, however, when European naval power and Mughal land power had cut off the Deccan’s access to Southwest Asia, the Deccan sultanates were forced to rely upon local Muslims (Deccanis) and Hindus to run their kingdoms. In fact, from the mid-1500s, Bijapur had turned over the major part of its revenue bureaucracy to local Marathi speaking Hindu classes, and the other sultanates were to follow suit. At the same time, the defeat of Vijayanagara in1565 prompted the exodus of thousands of artists, masons, artisans, singers, and dancers formerly dependent upon Vijayanagara patronage to move northward and seek such patronage in the “Muslim” courts of Bijapur and Golconda.
The net result was the gradual indianization of the Deccan sultanates, a process most vividly seen in the court patronage of Dakhni, the local lingua franca that borrowed freely from the indigenous languages of the Deccan, and in the miniature painting and architectural projects sponsored by these same courts. The two richest Deccan sultanates, Bijapur and Golconda, carried these artistic traditions the furthest, with Golconda’s Charminar gate in modern Hyderabad and Bijapur’s Ibrahim Rauza and Mihtar Mahal being perhaps the most outstanding architectural manifestations of a composite cultural tradition beautifully combining elements from Southwest Asia and the Deccan plateau.
The Deccan plateau comprises the upper portion of peninsular India, stretching from the range of mountains just inland from the west coast to the Bay of Bengal in the east, and from the Vindhya Mountains in the north to the Tungabhadra River in the south. This area had already been substantially hinduized before the arrival of Muslim influences, with three vernacular language regions -- Marathi, Telugu, and Kannada -- clearly emerging from about the twelfth century. Islamic influence in the plateau proper commenced in 1296 when Ala ud-Din Khalji, a Turkish officer serving the Delhi sultanate, raided and sacked the Yadava capital of Devagiri in the Marathi country. This was followed by a series of military incursions in the early fourteenth century, culminating in the Delhi sultanate’s formal annexation of the Marathi-speaking northern Deccan in 1318. The whole period from 1296 to 1347 was thus one in which Turkish or Indo-Turkish settlers, adventurers, soldiers, saints, and scholars migrated into the Deccan, forming as it were the cutting edge of the Delhi sultanate’s expanding military and cultural frontier.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the Delhi sultanate ceased to exercise its authority over the class of transplanted northerners in the Deccan who, settled in a region far from their homelands, began to feel a sense of their own cultural and political autonomy. Led by one Isma‘il Mukh, these settlers declared their independence from the Delhi sultanate in 1345, and two years later they established the first independent sultanate in the Deccan. This was the Bahmani kingdom, named after its first sultan, Ala ud-Din Bahman Shah. Lasting from 1347 to 1526, this dynasty of kings managed to establish its hegemony over the entire Deccan plateau, at its height extending its domain from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. This was accomplished in part from an efficient administrative system that used the same basic formula of success that was found in most Indo-Muslim sultanates: on the civil side, the Bahmani rulers managed to appropriate the services of the existing class of Hindu land revenue collectors, while on the military side, it combined a central body of crack troops personally loyal to the sultan with a decentralized network of officer-nobles who were assigned territorial administration in return for maintaining irregular troops.
This combination of military systems, especially when backed up by infusions of cavalry horses from Central Asia or through the port of Goa, proved extremely effective in dislodging local Hindu princes from power. But the system also contained the seeds of its own demise, as local commanders possessing local bases of power could, like Isma‘il Mukh, entertain the possibility of rebelling against the center and establishing new, independent sultanates. In time, in fact, the governors of the more important Bahmani provinces did just that, and by the late fifteenth century five independent sultanates had broken off from the disintegrating parent Bahmani sultanate. These were the Imad Shahi kingdom of Berar (1460-1574) in the northern part of the former Bahmani domain, the Barid Shahi kingdom of Bidar (1487-1619) in the central Deccan, the Nizam Shahi kingdom of Ahmadnagar (1490-1633) in the northwest, the Adil Shahi kingdom of Bijapur (1490-1686) in the southwest, and the Qutb Shahi kingdom of Golconda (1496-1687) in the eastern Deccan. The first two, smaller and weaker, were absorbed by their neighbors, whereas the last three were more powerful and were each in turn eventually absorbed by the supreme power of seventeenth century India, the Mughal Empire.
One of the central social problems of the Bahmani sultans, inherited too by each of the successor kingdoms, stemmed from administrative necessity. Reluctant to entrust their upper civil and military bureaucracies to Hindus, most sultanates sought Muslim immigrants from either North India or Southwest Asia to meet their staffing needs. But once recruited, these fresh immigrants tended not to assimilate easily with older classes descended from earlier migrants, and in fact often affected a sense of superiority over the latter. Thus, in the course of the fifteenth century two rival social groups emerged within the ranks of the ruling class: the “foreigners” (called afaqi) and the Deccanis. Whereas the former were often Iranian, spoke Persian, and were Shi‘a Muslims, the latter considered themselves natives of the Deccan, spoke a proto-Urdu language called Dakhni, and were usually Sunni Muslims. The poisonous animosity that existed between these two classes of ruling Muslims occasionally erupted in armed conflict and formed another cause of the political decline of the Deccan sultanates. Moreover, the Shi‘a orientation of the foreigners was ultimately to provide the Mughal emperor Aurangzib, a devout Sunni, with a pretext for waging disastrous wars against the last surviving sultanates, Bijapur and Golconda, in the late seventeenth century.
The contemporary Persian chronicles that form our primary sources for the history of these sultanates are replete with narratives of their various military affairs and political intrigues. First, there were the wars waged by two sultanates, Bijapur and Ahmadnagar, against the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Vastly superior Portuguese naval power decided most conflicts in the Europeans’ favor, resulting in the establishment of Portuguese coastal enclaves such as in Goa, which was seized from Bijapur in 1511. More typical were the civil wars that plagued all five successor sultanates throughout their history. Rulers owed their political existence to their sheer military capacity to wrest independence from former overlords and to maintain that independence against the encroachments of their neighbors. Consequently, the sultanates were always jockeying for position, with challenges to the control of key hill-forts typically touching off costly wars between them. The most disastrous wars for those sultanates that survived into the seventeenth century, however, were those waged against the Mughal Empire. After absorbing Malwa and Gujarat into the Mughal Empire, the emperor Akbar began putting pressure on the Nizam Shahi kingdom of Ahmadnagar in the 1590s, and, though heroically defended first by the queen Chand Bibi and later by the Abyssinian Malik Ambar, the kingdom eventually fell to Mughal arms in 1633. The same fate was to befall Bijapur and Golconda later in that century.
Additionally, there were the wars waged by the Deccan sultanates against the powerful Hindu state to the south, Vijayanagara. Ever since 1296, Indo-Turkish pressure from North India had forced Telugu and Marathi speaking Hindu warrior groups from the northern Deccan to migrate to the south, where they re-established themselves as warrior states armed with an explicitly Hindu ideological orientation. The most important of these, Vijayanagara, was founded in 1336 and established an immense capital city of the same name along the banks of the Tungabhadra River, which formed a bulwark against the further southward expansion of Indo-Turkish power. Eight major wars were fought between Bahmani and Vijayanagara armies between 1349 and 1481. After the fall of the Bahmani dynasty, its successor states continued this tradition of hostility until 1565, when Sultan Ali Adil Shah I of Bijapur forged an alliance of Deccan sultanates that managed to defeat the Hindu state and sack its great capital city in the Battle of Talikota.
The cultural traditions of the Deccan sultanates were shaped by two factors: their desire to recruit Muslim administrators, soldiers, Sufis, and scholars from Iran and Arab Southwest Asia, to which they looked for cultural inspiration, and their tendency over time to adopt local Marathi, Telugu, or Kannada customs in the area of speech, dress, diet, art, and architecture. Thus, for example, in the reigns of Sultan Firuz Bahmani (r. 1397-1422) and especially his son Ahmad Bahmani (r. 1422-1436), foreigners, mainly Persians, were actively recruited and rapidly filled ranking social and political positions. By the sixteenth and, especially, the seventeenth centuries, however, when European naval power and Mughal land power had cut off the Deccan’s access to Southwest Asia, the Deccan sultanates were forced to rely upon local Muslims (Deccanis) and Hindus to run their kingdoms. In fact, from the mid-1500s, Bijapur had turned over the major part of its revenue bureaucracy to local Marathi speaking Hindu classes, and the other sultanates were to follow suit. At the same time, the defeat of Vijayanagara in1565 prompted the exodus of thousands of artists, masons, artisans, singers, and dancers formerly dependent upon Vijayanagara patronage to move northward and seek such patronage in the “Muslim” courts of Bijapur and Golconda.
The net result was the gradual indianization of the Deccan sultanates, a process most vividly seen in the court patronage of Dakhni, the local lingua franca that borrowed freely from the indigenous languages of the Deccan, and in the miniature painting and architectural projects sponsored by these same courts. The two richest Deccan sultanates, Bijapur and Golconda, carried these artistic traditions the furthest, with Golconda’s Charminar gate in modern Hyderabad and Bijapur’s Ibrahim Rauza and Mihtar Mahal being perhaps the most outstanding architectural manifestations of a composite cultural tradition beautifully combining elements from Southwest Asia and the Deccan plateau.
Delhi Sultans
Delhi Sultans (Delhi Sultanate). Members of the major Islamic dynasties of India 1206-1526/1556. The sultans of Delhi were the successors of the Ghaznavids and Ghurids in the Punjab and northern India. During the decline of the Ghurids, their Turkish general Qutb al-Din Aibak (1206-1210) declared his independence and established the realm of the so-called “slave sultans” of Delhi. Among these Iltutmish (1210-1236) was the most prominent. The conquest of Sind earned him a reputation as the main architect of Islamic rule in India. In 1290, the “slave sultans” were toppled by the Khalji dynasty (1290-1320). Ala al-Din Khalji (1296-1316) repelled the Mongols and conquered the Deccan (central India) for Islam. From the Tughluq dynasty that followed (1320-1414), Firuz (1351-1388) was able to consolidate its rule in northern India, yet following his death various sultanates defected from Delhi (Bengal, Deccan, Gujarat, Jaunpur, Malwa). In 1398, Delhi was occupied by Timur. The Sayyid dynasty (1414-1451) was followed by the Afghan Lodis (1451-1526), who were removed in 1526 by the first Great Mughal, Babur. With the expulsion of Babur’s son, Humayun, by Sher Shah Suri (1540-1545) and his successors (up to 1556), the sultanate of Delhi was re-established for a short period.
The establishment of the Delhi sultanate, which followed the overthrow of the Rajput kingdoms of northern India, led to vital changes in the political, social, and economic life of the country. It liquidated the multistate system and the feudal polity of the Rajputs and paved the way for a centralized monarchy with a pan-Indian administrative service. The land grants given by the sultans were essentially bureaucratic assignments and proved an effective local apparatus for the integration of the country. The Rajput cities, as described by al-Biruni in his Kitab al-Hind, were planned on the basis of caste. The Early Turkish sultans initiated an urban revolution by throwing open these cities to all types of people and converting them from “caste cities” into “cosmopolitan cities.” These new cities led to readjustment in social relationship and changed the entire milieu. The Turkish power was sustained and stabilized by these cities. The sultans restored India’s broken contact with the outside world and gave a new impetus to commercial activity. In place of a limited market, conditioned by caste and feudal situation, there appeared an international market stretching from Baghdad to Lakhnauti. One other important impact of the establishment of the sultanate was that throughout the entire territory Persian became the language of administration, replacing the innumerable languages and dialects that were spoken from one part of the country to another.
The rise of the Delhi sultanate was synchronous with the rise of Jenghiz Khan in Central Asia. Iltutmish tactfully avoided confrontation with the Mongols. His successors, until the time of Nasir ud-Din Mahmud (1246-1266), followed a policy of appeasement and aloofness, so much so that in 1260, barely two years after the sack of Baghdad by Hulegu and the murder of the legal sovereign of the Delhi sultanate (the khalifa of Baghdad), the Delhi court received the Mongol emissaries with great enthusiasm. Balban (1266-1287) changed the Mongol policy of the sultanate and garrisoned the frontier region to meet the Mongol challenge. But this affected his expansionist ambitions and he could only maintain a status quo so far as territorial growth was concerned. He succeeded in his objective to a large extent but the assassination of his eldest son, Prince Muhammad, at the hands of the Mongols shattered his position.
Ala ud-Din Khalji (1296-1316) followed a policy of firm resistance toward the Mongols but he also initiated an era of imperialism and forced the rajas of the Deccan to accept his overlordship. Mubarak Khalji (1316-1320) appointed a viceroy in the Deccan and attempted annexation of the region. Muhammad ibn Tughluq (1325-1351) completed the process of integration of the South with the North, and created a second administrative city in the Deccan, renaming it Daulatabad. Under Muhammad ibn Tughluq the frontiers of the Delhi sultanate reached their greatest extent, as the sultan vigorously pursued his policy of completing the political and administrative unification of the country. When the Delhi sultanate began to disintegrate under Firuz and his successors, provincial kingdoms rose up at Jaunpur, Malwa, Gujarat, and other places. In 1526, when Babur defeated the last sultan of Delhi, the empire was confined to some parts of the Punjab and the Ganges valley.
Legally, the Delhi sultanate was a part of the Abbasid caliphate and the rulers did not claim for themselves a position higher than that of “lieutenant of the khalifa”. Iltutmish was the first to obtain an investiture from the caliph at Baghdad. Even after the fall of the caliphate (in 1258), the sultans of Delhi continued to pronounce their affiliation with the khalifat. Muhammad ibn Tughluq received recognition from the caliph in Cairo. In 1517, when Ibrahim Lodi ascended to the throne, the Abbasid caliphate had long been overthrown by the Ottomans.
The early sultans of Delhi believed in the Iranian theory of kingship and attributed divine source to their authority. Ala ud-Din Khalji introduced the element of force and claimed obedience on the basis of his power to rule. The Tughluqs, the Sayyids, and the Lodis made lofty claims about their genealogy, but after the Ilbaris the principle of legitimacy could never effectively be applied. Under the influence of Ibn Taimiya, Muhammad ibn Tughluq propounded the theory that “state and religion are twins”. The position of the monarchy received a serious setback under the Lodi Afghans, who considered their sultan as primus inter pares within the Afghan elite.
The polity of the Delhi sultanate passed through different phases. The early Turkish sultans created Turkish nobility as the main prop of their power and the sultanate became a Turkish state. The Khaljis broadened the base and converted it into an Indo-Muslim state. Under Muhammad ibn Tughluq, an effort was made to make it an Indian state, coterminous with all Indian people, in which the nobility came to be recruited from all sections of the population. This policy no doubt broadened the base of the state but destroyed its compactness and homogeneity, making the governing class a promiscuous mass of people without any common ideal or loyalty. Tribal traditions of the Lodi nobility further weakened the position of monarchy.
The administrative structure of the Delhi sultanate was an amalgam of four traditions: (1) Islamic traditions as evolved during the Abbasid period and transmitted to the Delhi sultans through the Samanids and the Ghaznavids, (2) Iranian traditions as imbibed and articulated by the Minor Dynasties, (3) Indian traditions as continued from generation to generation throughout the ages, and (4) Mongol traditions as adopted by the sultans on the basis of expediency or experience. In nomenclature, many of the institutions showed either Abbasid or Iranian influence. The taxation system had all the terms of the classical period “kharaj (land tax), ushr (a one-tenth land tax from Muslims), zakat (payment by Muslims on a year’s accumulated income), jizya (tax from non-Muslims), khams (war booty), and so forth -- but their connotations had undergone great change. The term jizya, for example, came to be used for kharaj in general, and the distinction between the Muslim and non-Muslim holders of land ceased to operate in the taxation system. The army of the sultans was organized on the decimal system and was directly recruited and paid by the center. From the footman and the bowman of the Rajput period the emphasis now shifted to the mounted horseman. The Turks are therefore referred to in Indian literature as “lords of the horse.”
The sultan was assisted by ministers in carrying on the administration of the empire. The vazir was the chief minister, whose powers and functions varied with the attitude of the sultans. Other important ministries were diwan-i risalat (which dealt with religious matters, trusts, stipends, etc.) diwan-i arz (army department), and diwan-i insha (royal correspondence). The provinces were administered and looked after by the governors. In the rural areas the khuts, muqaddams, and chaudhris constituted the local administrative apparatus. Many of the officers of the Hindu period were allowed to continue, although their duties and functions underwent some change with the policies of the sultans. The land tax varied from time to time, with the maximum realized during the reign of Ala ud-Din Khalji being 50 percent of the produce.
The Tughluq sultans initiated an elaborate agrarian policy. Muhammad ibn Tughluq adopted different methods to encourage agriculture, such as collective farming and farming by contract. A department called the diwan-i amir kohi looked after the promotion of agriculture. The power of the state to control essential commodities and fix prices was accepted. Ala ud-Din Khalji successfully implemented his policy of market control. The state undertook many welfare activities. It founded colleges and hospitals, dug canals, provided assistance for the elderly, and laid out gardens and orchards.
Judicial administration of the sultanate was run by the qazis, Islamic legal officers. In rural areas, the Hindu inhabitants enjoyed a kind of autonomy under the Hindu local officers. The muhtasib (censor of public morals) was responsible for suppressing immoral activities.
The secular nature of the institutions of the Delhi sultanate has been well brought out by the historian Zia ud-Din Barani (1285-1357). He reports that the sultanate had to frame laws that had no sanction in Islamic law (shari’a), but without which no government could be run. Religious attitudes of the individual rulers did in certain measure influence the general spirit of the government but the general policies of the sultanate were not decided on the basis of religion. Ala ud-Din is reported to have said, “I do not know what is lawful or unlawful; whatever I consider in the interest of the state, that I decree.”
A principle of religious co-existence evolved in the Delhi sultanate, Hindus were not obstructed in the performance of their religious duties and temples were not destroyed in times of peace. Iltutmish and Ala ud-Din Khalji brushed aside the suggestions of orthodox theologians to deal strictly with the Hindus and stop their religious practices. Some rulers took interest in Hindu festivals. Muhammad ibn Tughluq celebrated Holi and made huge endowments to Hindu gao maths (cow centers).
The sultanate encouraged trade, and while large numbers of foreign traders visited India, many Indian merchants went to Central Asia, Iran, and West Asian countries. Writers of the period refer to the affluent condition of Khurasani merchants in India. Muhammad ibn Tughluq abolished import duty in order to encourage trade with foreign lands, and during his time gold could be taken out of India in any quantity. It is said that the Delhi sultanate was the root, and the Mughal Empire, the fruit, of Muslim statesmanship in India.
Delhi Sultans (Delhi Sultanate). Members of the major Islamic dynasties of India 1206-1526/1556. The sultans of Delhi were the successors of the Ghaznavids and Ghurids in the Punjab and northern India. During the decline of the Ghurids, their Turkish general Qutb al-Din Aibak (1206-1210) declared his independence and established the realm of the so-called “slave sultans” of Delhi. Among these Iltutmish (1210-1236) was the most prominent. The conquest of Sind earned him a reputation as the main architect of Islamic rule in India. In 1290, the “slave sultans” were toppled by the Khalji dynasty (1290-1320). Ala al-Din Khalji (1296-1316) repelled the Mongols and conquered the Deccan (central India) for Islam. From the Tughluq dynasty that followed (1320-1414), Firuz (1351-1388) was able to consolidate its rule in northern India, yet following his death various sultanates defected from Delhi (Bengal, Deccan, Gujarat, Jaunpur, Malwa). In 1398, Delhi was occupied by Timur. The Sayyid dynasty (1414-1451) was followed by the Afghan Lodis (1451-1526), who were removed in 1526 by the first Great Mughal, Babur. With the expulsion of Babur’s son, Humayun, by Sher Shah Suri (1540-1545) and his successors (up to 1556), the sultanate of Delhi was re-established for a short period.
The establishment of the Delhi sultanate, which followed the overthrow of the Rajput kingdoms of northern India, led to vital changes in the political, social, and economic life of the country. It liquidated the multistate system and the feudal polity of the Rajputs and paved the way for a centralized monarchy with a pan-Indian administrative service. The land grants given by the sultans were essentially bureaucratic assignments and proved an effective local apparatus for the integration of the country. The Rajput cities, as described by al-Biruni in his Kitab al-Hind, were planned on the basis of caste. The Early Turkish sultans initiated an urban revolution by throwing open these cities to all types of people and converting them from “caste cities” into “cosmopolitan cities.” These new cities led to readjustment in social relationship and changed the entire milieu. The Turkish power was sustained and stabilized by these cities. The sultans restored India’s broken contact with the outside world and gave a new impetus to commercial activity. In place of a limited market, conditioned by caste and feudal situation, there appeared an international market stretching from Baghdad to Lakhnauti. One other important impact of the establishment of the sultanate was that throughout the entire territory Persian became the language of administration, replacing the innumerable languages and dialects that were spoken from one part of the country to another.
The rise of the Delhi sultanate was synchronous with the rise of Jenghiz Khan in Central Asia. Iltutmish tactfully avoided confrontation with the Mongols. His successors, until the time of Nasir ud-Din Mahmud (1246-1266), followed a policy of appeasement and aloofness, so much so that in 1260, barely two years after the sack of Baghdad by Hulegu and the murder of the legal sovereign of the Delhi sultanate (the khalifa of Baghdad), the Delhi court received the Mongol emissaries with great enthusiasm. Balban (1266-1287) changed the Mongol policy of the sultanate and garrisoned the frontier region to meet the Mongol challenge. But this affected his expansionist ambitions and he could only maintain a status quo so far as territorial growth was concerned. He succeeded in his objective to a large extent but the assassination of his eldest son, Prince Muhammad, at the hands of the Mongols shattered his position.
Ala ud-Din Khalji (1296-1316) followed a policy of firm resistance toward the Mongols but he also initiated an era of imperialism and forced the rajas of the Deccan to accept his overlordship. Mubarak Khalji (1316-1320) appointed a viceroy in the Deccan and attempted annexation of the region. Muhammad ibn Tughluq (1325-1351) completed the process of integration of the South with the North, and created a second administrative city in the Deccan, renaming it Daulatabad. Under Muhammad ibn Tughluq the frontiers of the Delhi sultanate reached their greatest extent, as the sultan vigorously pursued his policy of completing the political and administrative unification of the country. When the Delhi sultanate began to disintegrate under Firuz and his successors, provincial kingdoms rose up at Jaunpur, Malwa, Gujarat, and other places. In 1526, when Babur defeated the last sultan of Delhi, the empire was confined to some parts of the Punjab and the Ganges valley.
Legally, the Delhi sultanate was a part of the Abbasid caliphate and the rulers did not claim for themselves a position higher than that of “lieutenant of the khalifa”. Iltutmish was the first to obtain an investiture from the caliph at Baghdad. Even after the fall of the caliphate (in 1258), the sultans of Delhi continued to pronounce their affiliation with the khalifat. Muhammad ibn Tughluq received recognition from the caliph in Cairo. In 1517, when Ibrahim Lodi ascended to the throne, the Abbasid caliphate had long been overthrown by the Ottomans.
The early sultans of Delhi believed in the Iranian theory of kingship and attributed divine source to their authority. Ala ud-Din Khalji introduced the element of force and claimed obedience on the basis of his power to rule. The Tughluqs, the Sayyids, and the Lodis made lofty claims about their genealogy, but after the Ilbaris the principle of legitimacy could never effectively be applied. Under the influence of Ibn Taimiya, Muhammad ibn Tughluq propounded the theory that “state and religion are twins”. The position of the monarchy received a serious setback under the Lodi Afghans, who considered their sultan as primus inter pares within the Afghan elite.
The polity of the Delhi sultanate passed through different phases. The early Turkish sultans created Turkish nobility as the main prop of their power and the sultanate became a Turkish state. The Khaljis broadened the base and converted it into an Indo-Muslim state. Under Muhammad ibn Tughluq, an effort was made to make it an Indian state, coterminous with all Indian people, in which the nobility came to be recruited from all sections of the population. This policy no doubt broadened the base of the state but destroyed its compactness and homogeneity, making the governing class a promiscuous mass of people without any common ideal or loyalty. Tribal traditions of the Lodi nobility further weakened the position of monarchy.
The administrative structure of the Delhi sultanate was an amalgam of four traditions: (1) Islamic traditions as evolved during the Abbasid period and transmitted to the Delhi sultans through the Samanids and the Ghaznavids, (2) Iranian traditions as imbibed and articulated by the Minor Dynasties, (3) Indian traditions as continued from generation to generation throughout the ages, and (4) Mongol traditions as adopted by the sultans on the basis of expediency or experience. In nomenclature, many of the institutions showed either Abbasid or Iranian influence. The taxation system had all the terms of the classical period “kharaj (land tax), ushr (a one-tenth land tax from Muslims), zakat (payment by Muslims on a year’s accumulated income), jizya (tax from non-Muslims), khams (war booty), and so forth -- but their connotations had undergone great change. The term jizya, for example, came to be used for kharaj in general, and the distinction between the Muslim and non-Muslim holders of land ceased to operate in the taxation system. The army of the sultans was organized on the decimal system and was directly recruited and paid by the center. From the footman and the bowman of the Rajput period the emphasis now shifted to the mounted horseman. The Turks are therefore referred to in Indian literature as “lords of the horse.”
The sultan was assisted by ministers in carrying on the administration of the empire. The vazir was the chief minister, whose powers and functions varied with the attitude of the sultans. Other important ministries were diwan-i risalat (which dealt with religious matters, trusts, stipends, etc.) diwan-i arz (army department), and diwan-i insha (royal correspondence). The provinces were administered and looked after by the governors. In the rural areas the khuts, muqaddams, and chaudhris constituted the local administrative apparatus. Many of the officers of the Hindu period were allowed to continue, although their duties and functions underwent some change with the policies of the sultans. The land tax varied from time to time, with the maximum realized during the reign of Ala ud-Din Khalji being 50 percent of the produce.
The Tughluq sultans initiated an elaborate agrarian policy. Muhammad ibn Tughluq adopted different methods to encourage agriculture, such as collective farming and farming by contract. A department called the diwan-i amir kohi looked after the promotion of agriculture. The power of the state to control essential commodities and fix prices was accepted. Ala ud-Din Khalji successfully implemented his policy of market control. The state undertook many welfare activities. It founded colleges and hospitals, dug canals, provided assistance for the elderly, and laid out gardens and orchards.
Judicial administration of the sultanate was run by the qazis, Islamic legal officers. In rural areas, the Hindu inhabitants enjoyed a kind of autonomy under the Hindu local officers. The muhtasib (censor of public morals) was responsible for suppressing immoral activities.
The secular nature of the institutions of the Delhi sultanate has been well brought out by the historian Zia ud-Din Barani (1285-1357). He reports that the sultanate had to frame laws that had no sanction in Islamic law (shari’a), but without which no government could be run. Religious attitudes of the individual rulers did in certain measure influence the general spirit of the government but the general policies of the sultanate were not decided on the basis of religion. Ala ud-Din is reported to have said, “I do not know what is lawful or unlawful; whatever I consider in the interest of the state, that I decree.”
A principle of religious co-existence evolved in the Delhi sultanate, Hindus were not obstructed in the performance of their religious duties and temples were not destroyed in times of peace. Iltutmish and Ala ud-Din Khalji brushed aside the suggestions of orthodox theologians to deal strictly with the Hindus and stop their religious practices. Some rulers took interest in Hindu festivals. Muhammad ibn Tughluq celebrated Holi and made huge endowments to Hindu gao maths (cow centers).
The sultanate encouraged trade, and while large numbers of foreign traders visited India, many Indian merchants went to Central Asia, Iran, and West Asian countries. Writers of the period refer to the affluent condition of Khurasani merchants in India. Muhammad ibn Tughluq abolished import duty in order to encourage trade with foreign lands, and during his time gold could be taken out of India in any quantity. It is said that the Delhi sultanate was the root, and the Mughal Empire, the fruit, of Muslim statesmanship in India.
Demirel
Demirel (Suleyman Demirel) (Sami Süleyman Gündoğdu Demirel) (b. November 1, 1924). Turkish politician and prime minister of Turkey (1965-1971 and 1975-1977).
Demirel was born in Islamskoy (Islamkoy) into a peasant family. In 1948, he graduated from the Technical University of Istanbul as an engineer.
In 1961, Demirel was elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Justice Party, and in 1964, he became the leader of the Justice Party.
On October 27, 1965, following the general elections, Demirel became the youngest prime minister in Turkey’s history. Demirel won re-election in 1969. In March of 1971, Demirel was forced to resign by the military commanders who were dissatisfied with his low profile in combating terrorist actions around the country.
In March of 1975, Demirel’s Justice Party and a coalition of small parties called Nationalist Front won the general elections. Demirel returned to the position of prime minister.
Demirel’s government fell in June of 1977 forcing Demirel to form a new government in July of 1977, but this new government also fell within only six months of its creation.
In November 1979, Demirel formed his sixth government. But with unemployment at 20 percent, Demirel was unable to stop the political terrorism that continued to plague the country, and in September of 1980 a military government replaced him.
In 1982, with a new Turkish constitution, Demirel was banned from politics for ten years.
In November 1991, following the defeat of the Motherland Party in the general elections, and the success of Demirel’s True Path Party, Demirel returned to politics and formed his seventh government.
In May 1993, President Turgut Ozal died. Demirel stepped down from his position as prime minister in order to become the new president.
In January 1996, Demirel asked the Islamist politician Necmettin Erbakan to form a new government. In May of the same year, Demirel escaped assassination by a militant Islamist.
In December 1999, Demirel appealed to the parliament to suspend the death sentence passed on the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
In May 2000, as his constitutionally allowed period as president came to an end, Demirel stepped down as president and was succeeded by Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Later that same year, in December, Demirel was appointed to the Mitchell Committee to investigate the wave of violence in Southwest Asia and North Africa.
During his political career, Demirel was active in forging closer ties with NATO, and he instituted development programs for the peasantry. He was much concerned with aiding economical growth, but faced huge problems with inflation and a trade deficit, as well as civil violence and terrorism. During his time as president, Demirel opposed a plan for a customs union with the European Union.
Demirel had to find a balance between his politics and the interests of the military, but was removed from power twice. Another problem of his was that some of the governments he formed were too weak to allow proper implementation of his politics.
He married Nazmiye Demirel. The couple had no children.
Following retirement from politics, Demirel was frequently a panelist and speaker at several universities in Turkey.
The Suleyman Demirel Airport and Suleyman Demirel University, both of which are in Isparta are named after him. So are the Süleyman Demirel Stadium in Antalya and Süleyman Demirel Medical Centre of Ataturk University in Erzurum.
Suleyman Demirel see Demirel
Demirel (Suleyman Demirel) (Sami Süleyman Gündoğdu Demirel) (b. November 1, 1924). Turkish politician and prime minister of Turkey (1965-1971 and 1975-1977).
Demirel was born in Islamskoy (Islamkoy) into a peasant family. In 1948, he graduated from the Technical University of Istanbul as an engineer.
In 1961, Demirel was elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Justice Party, and in 1964, he became the leader of the Justice Party.
On October 27, 1965, following the general elections, Demirel became the youngest prime minister in Turkey’s history. Demirel won re-election in 1969. In March of 1971, Demirel was forced to resign by the military commanders who were dissatisfied with his low profile in combating terrorist actions around the country.
In March of 1975, Demirel’s Justice Party and a coalition of small parties called Nationalist Front won the general elections. Demirel returned to the position of prime minister.
Demirel’s government fell in June of 1977 forcing Demirel to form a new government in July of 1977, but this new government also fell within only six months of its creation.
In November 1979, Demirel formed his sixth government. But with unemployment at 20 percent, Demirel was unable to stop the political terrorism that continued to plague the country, and in September of 1980 a military government replaced him.
In 1982, with a new Turkish constitution, Demirel was banned from politics for ten years.
In November 1991, following the defeat of the Motherland Party in the general elections, and the success of Demirel’s True Path Party, Demirel returned to politics and formed his seventh government.
In May 1993, President Turgut Ozal died. Demirel stepped down from his position as prime minister in order to become the new president.
In January 1996, Demirel asked the Islamist politician Necmettin Erbakan to form a new government. In May of the same year, Demirel escaped assassination by a militant Islamist.
In December 1999, Demirel appealed to the parliament to suspend the death sentence passed on the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
In May 2000, as his constitutionally allowed period as president came to an end, Demirel stepped down as president and was succeeded by Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Later that same year, in December, Demirel was appointed to the Mitchell Committee to investigate the wave of violence in Southwest Asia and North Africa.
During his political career, Demirel was active in forging closer ties with NATO, and he instituted development programs for the peasantry. He was much concerned with aiding economical growth, but faced huge problems with inflation and a trade deficit, as well as civil violence and terrorism. During his time as president, Demirel opposed a plan for a customs union with the European Union.
Demirel had to find a balance between his politics and the interests of the military, but was removed from power twice. Another problem of his was that some of the governments he formed were too weak to allow proper implementation of his politics.
He married Nazmiye Demirel. The couple had no children.
Following retirement from politics, Demirel was frequently a panelist and speaker at several universities in Turkey.
The Suleyman Demirel Airport and Suleyman Demirel University, both of which are in Isparta are named after him. So are the Süleyman Demirel Stadium in Antalya and Süleyman Demirel Medical Centre of Ataturk University in Erzurum.
Suleyman Demirel see Demirel
Demokrat Parti
Demokrat Parti (DP). Ruling party of Turkey from 1950 until its overthrow by a military coup on May 27, 1960. Its founders, Celal Bayar (1884-1986), Mehmet Fuat Koprulu (1890-1966), Refik Koraltan (1891-1974), and Adnan Menderes (1899-1961), were all ranking members of the governing Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP). Bayar, a banker in his early life, had played a critical role during the Kemalist period in the liberal, anti-statist wing of the party and had served as prime minister in 1937-1938. Koprulu, a historian and Turcologist, had proposed a reformation that would turkify Islam; his proposal, however, was not taken seriously. Koraltan was a bureaucrat, and Menderes a large landowner from the prosperous Aegean region. Together they represented the liberal wing of the CHP; in forming the DP, they responded to the rising bourgeoisie’s demand fro political and economic liberalization and an end to the state’s hegemony over civil society. The Turkish people had also come to hate the single-party regime, which had become increasingly repressive, especially during World War II. The imposition of militant secularism was especially resented by the sullen population. The pressure for political change that came from a victorious America, which encouraged pluralism and a free-market economy, ought not to be discounted either.
The introduction of multi-party politics and the lively competition for votes made Islam a burning issue and forced all parties to re-evaluate their religious policy. Between 1945 and the 1950 elections, the CHP abandoned its militant secularism and made concessions to Islamic sentiment. When the Democrats won power in May 1950, they merely accelerated the process, realizing that the overwhelmingly Muslim population had been alienated by state interference in religious life.
The Democrats’ first concession was quite dramatic: in June, 1950, they lifted the ban on the call to prayer (ezan) being made in Arabic and permitted muezzins to sing the ezan in either Arabic or Turkish. Most chose Arabic, and the impact of this reform resounded throughout the country. On July 5, 1950, they permitted the broadcasting of religious programs over the radio, and the Qur’an was heard over the airwaves. In October, religious lesson in schools (introduced by the CHP) became virtually obligatory when parents were asked to inform the authorities in writing if they did not want their children to attend such lessons. Few Muslim parents did so.
There was a bipartisan consensus on religious policy as long as the secular reforms of Ataturk were not threatened. In fact, both parties welcomed the Director of Religious Affairs’ pronouncement against communism. “Islam,” declared Ahmed Hamdi Akseki, “rejects communism absolutely, its ideology in any form and all its practices. Faith and spirit are the most powerful weapons against communism. It is not possible for a genuine believer to reconcile himself to the ideas and practices of communism.”
The more liberal atmosphere marked by an emphasis on populist politics also led to the reappearance of a variety of religious orders popular with the masses. Their leaders believed that Islamist political pressure would compel the DP government to reverse some of the major reforms of the republic, notably the Western code of law and the Latin script. In the DP’s congress in Konya in 1951, there were demands for the restoration of the fez, the headwear banned in 1925, and the veiling of women. Politics also entered the mosque, and the Friday sermon was often used to denounce the opposition for being anti-Islam. Even Ataturk’s busts and statues, found in every village and town, were vandalized.
The CHP, founded by Ataturk and claiming his mantle, blamed the Democrats for failing to protect the Kemalism to which both parties were constitutionally committed. Prime Minister Menderes responded by taking stern measures against the reactionaries. In March 1951 orders were issued to protect Ataturk’s statues, and men like Necip Fazil Kisakurek, who led to Islamic resurgence, were prosecuted. Islamist publications were proscribed. In June 1951, members of the Tijani order, who were agitating for the restoration of a theocratic monarchy (also a violation of the constitution), were arrested. Their shaykh, Kemal Pilavoglu, was sentenced to ten years at hard labor. The “Ataturk Bill” passed by the Assembly on July 25, 1951, gave the state greater powers to prosecute those who threatened the secular republic. Under this law, the Islamic Democrat Party was dissolved in March 1952, Kisakurek was sent to jail, and Said Nursi (Nurculuk), the leader of the Nurists, was put on trial. Finally, the “Law to protect the Freedom of Conscience” was passed in July 1953 to prevent Islam from being used for political ends. Under this law, when the Nation Party, founded in July 1948 by a right wing splinter group in the DP, made Islam a part of its political platform, it was dissolved by court order on January 27, 1954.
In the 1954, election, however, all parties exploited religion to attract votes, though with little success. The DP’s victory was even more resounding than in 1950, its triumph being based on its economic policies, which initially brought the country prosperity as well as a great sense of dynamism and hope. Only in Kirsehir was Islam’s role criticial; there the Republican Nation Party, supported by the Bektashi order, won all seats.
After 1955 the DP too began to exploit Islam more openly. There were two principal reasons for the change. First, the liberal Kemalist wing broke away and formed the Freedom Party, strengthening the right wing. Second, the economy began to stall, leading the Democrats to flout their religious image as a distraction. They cultivated the religious orders because they controlled local voting blocs. More money was spent on mosques, and the Democrats boasted that they had spent 37.5 million liras (over thirteen million dollars) in seven years, while the CHP had spent only 6.5 million liras in their twenty-seven years.
The decline of the DP’s vote from 56.6 percent in 1954 to 47.3 percent in 1957 suggests that its religious voters were drawn away, and religious appeal was a poor substitute. Religious activity flourished in 1958, a disastrous year for the economy with the lira devalued by almost four hundred percent. Radio was now allowed to devote more airtime to religious programs, and the Nurists were left freed to spread their propaganda.
The Democrats had become identified with the resurgence of Islam. After Menderes survived an airplane crash in London in February 1959, that identification became more explicit; the hand of providence was seen in the escape, described as miraculous. The myth of Menderes’s immortality emerged, and it has been suggested that the junta that overthrew him executed Menderes to destroy this myth.
The Demokrat Parti facilitated the Islamic resurgence as any ruling party would have done to survive the challenge of competitive politics. In fact, the resurgence was more the consequence of the mass politics that replaced the politics of elites in 1945. The center of political gravity shifted to provinces largely untouched by Kemalist reforms or modern secular culture. This was recognized after the fall of the Democrats, and any party that has won power since has had to cope with this element of political life.
DP see Demokrat Parti
Demokrat Parti (DP). Ruling party of Turkey from 1950 until its overthrow by a military coup on May 27, 1960. Its founders, Celal Bayar (1884-1986), Mehmet Fuat Koprulu (1890-1966), Refik Koraltan (1891-1974), and Adnan Menderes (1899-1961), were all ranking members of the governing Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP). Bayar, a banker in his early life, had played a critical role during the Kemalist period in the liberal, anti-statist wing of the party and had served as prime minister in 1937-1938. Koprulu, a historian and Turcologist, had proposed a reformation that would turkify Islam; his proposal, however, was not taken seriously. Koraltan was a bureaucrat, and Menderes a large landowner from the prosperous Aegean region. Together they represented the liberal wing of the CHP; in forming the DP, they responded to the rising bourgeoisie’s demand fro political and economic liberalization and an end to the state’s hegemony over civil society. The Turkish people had also come to hate the single-party regime, which had become increasingly repressive, especially during World War II. The imposition of militant secularism was especially resented by the sullen population. The pressure for political change that came from a victorious America, which encouraged pluralism and a free-market economy, ought not to be discounted either.
The introduction of multi-party politics and the lively competition for votes made Islam a burning issue and forced all parties to re-evaluate their religious policy. Between 1945 and the 1950 elections, the CHP abandoned its militant secularism and made concessions to Islamic sentiment. When the Democrats won power in May 1950, they merely accelerated the process, realizing that the overwhelmingly Muslim population had been alienated by state interference in religious life.
The Democrats’ first concession was quite dramatic: in June, 1950, they lifted the ban on the call to prayer (ezan) being made in Arabic and permitted muezzins to sing the ezan in either Arabic or Turkish. Most chose Arabic, and the impact of this reform resounded throughout the country. On July 5, 1950, they permitted the broadcasting of religious programs over the radio, and the Qur’an was heard over the airwaves. In October, religious lesson in schools (introduced by the CHP) became virtually obligatory when parents were asked to inform the authorities in writing if they did not want their children to attend such lessons. Few Muslim parents did so.
There was a bipartisan consensus on religious policy as long as the secular reforms of Ataturk were not threatened. In fact, both parties welcomed the Director of Religious Affairs’ pronouncement against communism. “Islam,” declared Ahmed Hamdi Akseki, “rejects communism absolutely, its ideology in any form and all its practices. Faith and spirit are the most powerful weapons against communism. It is not possible for a genuine believer to reconcile himself to the ideas and practices of communism.”
The more liberal atmosphere marked by an emphasis on populist politics also led to the reappearance of a variety of religious orders popular with the masses. Their leaders believed that Islamist political pressure would compel the DP government to reverse some of the major reforms of the republic, notably the Western code of law and the Latin script. In the DP’s congress in Konya in 1951, there were demands for the restoration of the fez, the headwear banned in 1925, and the veiling of women. Politics also entered the mosque, and the Friday sermon was often used to denounce the opposition for being anti-Islam. Even Ataturk’s busts and statues, found in every village and town, were vandalized.
The CHP, founded by Ataturk and claiming his mantle, blamed the Democrats for failing to protect the Kemalism to which both parties were constitutionally committed. Prime Minister Menderes responded by taking stern measures against the reactionaries. In March 1951 orders were issued to protect Ataturk’s statues, and men like Necip Fazil Kisakurek, who led to Islamic resurgence, were prosecuted. Islamist publications were proscribed. In June 1951, members of the Tijani order, who were agitating for the restoration of a theocratic monarchy (also a violation of the constitution), were arrested. Their shaykh, Kemal Pilavoglu, was sentenced to ten years at hard labor. The “Ataturk Bill” passed by the Assembly on July 25, 1951, gave the state greater powers to prosecute those who threatened the secular republic. Under this law, the Islamic Democrat Party was dissolved in March 1952, Kisakurek was sent to jail, and Said Nursi (Nurculuk), the leader of the Nurists, was put on trial. Finally, the “Law to protect the Freedom of Conscience” was passed in July 1953 to prevent Islam from being used for political ends. Under this law, when the Nation Party, founded in July 1948 by a right wing splinter group in the DP, made Islam a part of its political platform, it was dissolved by court order on January 27, 1954.
In the 1954, election, however, all parties exploited religion to attract votes, though with little success. The DP’s victory was even more resounding than in 1950, its triumph being based on its economic policies, which initially brought the country prosperity as well as a great sense of dynamism and hope. Only in Kirsehir was Islam’s role criticial; there the Republican Nation Party, supported by the Bektashi order, won all seats.
After 1955 the DP too began to exploit Islam more openly. There were two principal reasons for the change. First, the liberal Kemalist wing broke away and formed the Freedom Party, strengthening the right wing. Second, the economy began to stall, leading the Democrats to flout their religious image as a distraction. They cultivated the religious orders because they controlled local voting blocs. More money was spent on mosques, and the Democrats boasted that they had spent 37.5 million liras (over thirteen million dollars) in seven years, while the CHP had spent only 6.5 million liras in their twenty-seven years.
The decline of the DP’s vote from 56.6 percent in 1954 to 47.3 percent in 1957 suggests that its religious voters were drawn away, and religious appeal was a poor substitute. Religious activity flourished in 1958, a disastrous year for the economy with the lira devalued by almost four hundred percent. Radio was now allowed to devote more airtime to religious programs, and the Nurists were left freed to spread their propaganda.
The Democrats had become identified with the resurgence of Islam. After Menderes survived an airplane crash in London in February 1959, that identification became more explicit; the hand of providence was seen in the escape, described as miraculous. The myth of Menderes’s immortality emerged, and it has been suggested that the junta that overthrew him executed Menderes to destroy this myth.
The Demokrat Parti facilitated the Islamic resurgence as any ruling party would have done to survive the challenge of competitive politics. In fact, the resurgence was more the consequence of the mass politics that replaced the politics of elites in 1945. The center of political gravity shifted to provinces largely untouched by Kemalist reforms or modern secular culture. This was recognized after the fall of the Democrats, and any party that has won power since has had to cope with this element of political life.
DP see Demokrat Parti
Deobandis
Deobandis. ‘Ulama’ associated with the Indo-Pakistani reformist movement centered in the Dar al-‘Ulum of Deoband. The school at Deoband, a country town some ninety miles northeast of Delhi, was founded in 1867. It was a pioneer effort to transmit the religious sciences, specifically the dars-i nizami identified with the Lucknow-based ‘ulama’ of Farangi Mahall, by utilizing institutional forms derived from British schools. The goal of the school was to preserve the teachings of the faith in a period of non-Muslim rule and considerable social change by holding Muslims to a standard of correct practice. Central to that goal was the creation of a class of formally trained and popularly supported ‘ulama’. The school had classrooms, a bureaucratically organized faculty, formal examinations, and an annual convocation. The founders, knowing princely patronage and waqf no longer to be dependable sources of financing, created a system of popular contributions utilizing the mail and money orders. Donors, many from the ashraf classes involved in government service and trade, were listed in an annual report.
Several men central to the foundation of the school were educated in Delhi in the 1840s and participated in two critically important institutions: the reformist milieu of ‘ulama’ linked to the family of Shah Wali Allah and Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi, and Delhi College, founded by the British to teach both European and “Oriental” subjects through the medium of Urdu rather than in the former court language Persian or the religious languages Sanskrit and Arabic. Among those later active at Deoband were the son and the nephew of a teacher at Delhi College, Maulana Mamluk ‘Ali Muhammad Ya ‘qub Nanautawi, the first principal or sadr mudarris (1867-1888) and a revered murshid or spiritual guide at the school, and Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi (1833-1877), the school’s sarparast (rector) and also a spiritual guide. Also present in Delhi were Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1829-1905), and early muhtamim (chancellor) and a scholar of hadith and fiqh, and Hajji Imdadullah (1817-1899), who departed for Mecca after the Mutiny of 1857 and served as the beloved pir of the early Deobandi ‘ulama’.
Starting with only a dozen students, the school enrolled several hundred by the end of the century. By its first centenary in 1967, it counted a total of 3,795 graduates from throughout India, 3,191 from what was then East and West Pakistan, and 431 from foreign countries. The students, whatever their geographic origin, were united by the use of standard Urdu and shared accommodation in dormitories. The school soon became a metropolitan center, with students coming in the early years from Central Asia, Afghanistan, and all of India. In the twentieth century, there have been students from the diaspora populations in East and South Africa, and from Europe and North America as well.
In its six-year course, the school emphasized hadith and the Hanafi legal tradition, using both as a framework to scrutinize customary practices and to enjoin correct observance of ritual and life-cycle events. Students typically sought the personal transformation of sober Sufism with the help of a spiritual guide. Multiple initiation into various silsilahs was common but occurred at the hands of a single murshid or pir. Those tied to Hajji Imdadullah were primarily Chishti Sabiri. The influence of the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi was also strong. Hallmarks of Deobandi practice included opposition to ‘urs (annual death anniversary celebrations) at the graves of saints, to the so-called fatihah food offerings for the dead (distributed after reciting the Fatihah Chapter of the Qur’an), and to the elaborate ceremonies associated with birth, marriage, and death often typical of local non-Muslims as well. By emphasizing individual responsibility for correct belief and practice, the Deobandis provided an alternative to an intercessory religion focused on the Sufi shrines and elaborate customary celebrations.
Deobandis served as imams, guardians and trustees of mosques and tombs, preachers, writers, and publishers of religious works. Some joined in the public debates that began in response to Christian missionary initiative in the nineteenth century. Many offered fatwas to provide spiritual counsel and guidance on legal matters apart from state institutions. Many were teachers. Among the most celebrated early graduates of the school was the prolific writer and revered spiritual guide Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi (1864-1943). His guide for Muslim girls, the Bihishti zevar, written at the turn of the century, has been widely circulated both in Urdu and in translations into many regional languages.
The Deobandis from the beginning envisaged a network of schools; the multiple ties of education, Sufi affiliation, and family linked many teachers among them. By the end of the nineteenth century there were more than a dozen schools known as Deobandi from Peshawar to Chittagong to Madras. In the calculations made for the school’s centenary, Deobandis were credited with founding 8,934 schools, both primary and advanced. Among the early schools, and most important down to the present, was the Mazahir-i ‘Ulum, founded in nearby Saharanpur. For a time, Maulana Rashid Ahmad served as chancellor of that school as well. Today there are Deobandi schools throughout the sub-continent, and the term Deobandi still characterizes one of the main divisions (maslak) of sub-continental ‘ulama’.
Originally quiescent politically, individual Deobandis, if not the school itself, began to act politically in the period before World War I. Maulana ‘Ubaidullah Sindhi (1872-1944) was one of the first to forge links between the ‘ulama’ and those educated at Aligarh. During the war he went to Afghanistan to work with German and Turkish agents there. Maulana Mahmudulhasan (1851-1920), traditionally counted as Deoband’s first student and later a celebrated teacher at the school, worked on behalf of the Ottomans in the Hejaz (Hijaz), as a result of which he was exiled to Malta. He became known as the “Shaykh al-Hind.”
As the nationalist movement gained strength, many Deobandis participated in the organization of the Jam‘iyatul ‘Ulama’-i Hind in 1919. The movement allied with the Congress Party but clearly envisaged independence as leading to a federation of religious communities with little common social and political life. As independence approached, most Deobandis opposed the partition of India and saw Pakistan as the creation of westernized forces and an enforced confinement of Muslim influence. Foremost among the politically active was Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957), who engaged in an exchange with Muhammad Iqbal over the priority of regional and religious identity for statehood. A minority of Deobandis, led by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad ‘Usmani (1887-1949) and including Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘, Maulana Ihtishamul Haqq Thanvi, and Maulana ‘Abdulhamid Bada’uni (d. 1969), supported the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. In 1945, in Calcutta they founded the Jam‘iyatul ‘Ulama’-i Islam, which continued as a political party in Pakistan. In 1967, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited Deoband on its centenary, and a commemorative stamp depicting the school was issued. In the early 1980s, the school was torn by factional strife linked to national political affiliation. Those associated with the family of the rector, Qari’ Muhammad Tayyib Qasimi, a grandson of Maulana Muhammad Qasim, were ousted. The central school, and the Deobandi schools throughout the subcontinent, continue to teach many students. The apolitical strand within the school’s teaching has taken shape for many in the widespread, now transnational, movement known since the 1920s as Tablighi Jama‘at. The movement has particularly cherished the hadith-based writings of Maulana Muhammad Zakariya Kandhalavi, long linked to Deoband’s sister school, the Mazahir-i ‘Ulum.
Deobandis. ‘Ulama’ associated with the Indo-Pakistani reformist movement centered in the Dar al-‘Ulum of Deoband. The school at Deoband, a country town some ninety miles northeast of Delhi, was founded in 1867. It was a pioneer effort to transmit the religious sciences, specifically the dars-i nizami identified with the Lucknow-based ‘ulama’ of Farangi Mahall, by utilizing institutional forms derived from British schools. The goal of the school was to preserve the teachings of the faith in a period of non-Muslim rule and considerable social change by holding Muslims to a standard of correct practice. Central to that goal was the creation of a class of formally trained and popularly supported ‘ulama’. The school had classrooms, a bureaucratically organized faculty, formal examinations, and an annual convocation. The founders, knowing princely patronage and waqf no longer to be dependable sources of financing, created a system of popular contributions utilizing the mail and money orders. Donors, many from the ashraf classes involved in government service and trade, were listed in an annual report.
Several men central to the foundation of the school were educated in Delhi in the 1840s and participated in two critically important institutions: the reformist milieu of ‘ulama’ linked to the family of Shah Wali Allah and Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi, and Delhi College, founded by the British to teach both European and “Oriental” subjects through the medium of Urdu rather than in the former court language Persian or the religious languages Sanskrit and Arabic. Among those later active at Deoband were the son and the nephew of a teacher at Delhi College, Maulana Mamluk ‘Ali Muhammad Ya ‘qub Nanautawi, the first principal or sadr mudarris (1867-1888) and a revered murshid or spiritual guide at the school, and Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi (1833-1877), the school’s sarparast (rector) and also a spiritual guide. Also present in Delhi were Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1829-1905), and early muhtamim (chancellor) and a scholar of hadith and fiqh, and Hajji Imdadullah (1817-1899), who departed for Mecca after the Mutiny of 1857 and served as the beloved pir of the early Deobandi ‘ulama’.
Starting with only a dozen students, the school enrolled several hundred by the end of the century. By its first centenary in 1967, it counted a total of 3,795 graduates from throughout India, 3,191 from what was then East and West Pakistan, and 431 from foreign countries. The students, whatever their geographic origin, were united by the use of standard Urdu and shared accommodation in dormitories. The school soon became a metropolitan center, with students coming in the early years from Central Asia, Afghanistan, and all of India. In the twentieth century, there have been students from the diaspora populations in East and South Africa, and from Europe and North America as well.
In its six-year course, the school emphasized hadith and the Hanafi legal tradition, using both as a framework to scrutinize customary practices and to enjoin correct observance of ritual and life-cycle events. Students typically sought the personal transformation of sober Sufism with the help of a spiritual guide. Multiple initiation into various silsilahs was common but occurred at the hands of a single murshid or pir. Those tied to Hajji Imdadullah were primarily Chishti Sabiri. The influence of the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi was also strong. Hallmarks of Deobandi practice included opposition to ‘urs (annual death anniversary celebrations) at the graves of saints, to the so-called fatihah food offerings for the dead (distributed after reciting the Fatihah Chapter of the Qur’an), and to the elaborate ceremonies associated with birth, marriage, and death often typical of local non-Muslims as well. By emphasizing individual responsibility for correct belief and practice, the Deobandis provided an alternative to an intercessory religion focused on the Sufi shrines and elaborate customary celebrations.
Deobandis served as imams, guardians and trustees of mosques and tombs, preachers, writers, and publishers of religious works. Some joined in the public debates that began in response to Christian missionary initiative in the nineteenth century. Many offered fatwas to provide spiritual counsel and guidance on legal matters apart from state institutions. Many were teachers. Among the most celebrated early graduates of the school was the prolific writer and revered spiritual guide Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi (1864-1943). His guide for Muslim girls, the Bihishti zevar, written at the turn of the century, has been widely circulated both in Urdu and in translations into many regional languages.
The Deobandis from the beginning envisaged a network of schools; the multiple ties of education, Sufi affiliation, and family linked many teachers among them. By the end of the nineteenth century there were more than a dozen schools known as Deobandi from Peshawar to Chittagong to Madras. In the calculations made for the school’s centenary, Deobandis were credited with founding 8,934 schools, both primary and advanced. Among the early schools, and most important down to the present, was the Mazahir-i ‘Ulum, founded in nearby Saharanpur. For a time, Maulana Rashid Ahmad served as chancellor of that school as well. Today there are Deobandi schools throughout the sub-continent, and the term Deobandi still characterizes one of the main divisions (maslak) of sub-continental ‘ulama’.
Originally quiescent politically, individual Deobandis, if not the school itself, began to act politically in the period before World War I. Maulana ‘Ubaidullah Sindhi (1872-1944) was one of the first to forge links between the ‘ulama’ and those educated at Aligarh. During the war he went to Afghanistan to work with German and Turkish agents there. Maulana Mahmudulhasan (1851-1920), traditionally counted as Deoband’s first student and later a celebrated teacher at the school, worked on behalf of the Ottomans in the Hejaz (Hijaz), as a result of which he was exiled to Malta. He became known as the “Shaykh al-Hind.”
As the nationalist movement gained strength, many Deobandis participated in the organization of the Jam‘iyatul ‘Ulama’-i Hind in 1919. The movement allied with the Congress Party but clearly envisaged independence as leading to a federation of religious communities with little common social and political life. As independence approached, most Deobandis opposed the partition of India and saw Pakistan as the creation of westernized forces and an enforced confinement of Muslim influence. Foremost among the politically active was Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957), who engaged in an exchange with Muhammad Iqbal over the priority of regional and religious identity for statehood. A minority of Deobandis, led by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad ‘Usmani (1887-1949) and including Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘, Maulana Ihtishamul Haqq Thanvi, and Maulana ‘Abdulhamid Bada’uni (d. 1969), supported the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. In 1945, in Calcutta they founded the Jam‘iyatul ‘Ulama’-i Islam, which continued as a political party in Pakistan. In 1967, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited Deoband on its centenary, and a commemorative stamp depicting the school was issued. In the early 1980s, the school was torn by factional strife linked to national political affiliation. Those associated with the family of the rector, Qari’ Muhammad Tayyib Qasimi, a grandson of Maulana Muhammad Qasim, were ousted. The central school, and the Deobandi schools throughout the subcontinent, continue to teach many students. The apolitical strand within the school’s teaching has taken shape for many in the widespread, now transnational, movement known since the 1920s as Tablighi Jama‘at. The movement has particularly cherished the hadith-based writings of Maulana Muhammad Zakariya Kandhalavi, long linked to Deoband’s sister school, the Mazahir-i ‘Ulum.
dervish
dervish (in Persian, darwish). The word “dervish” is the Persian (Farsi) word for “poor” or “beggar”. A dervish is a member of a Sufi order -- the Tariqa -- and is usually a mendicant or beggar. Paradoxically, the true beggar is one who does not beg at all but relies completely on God for the fulfillment of every material and spiritual need. In the Sufi classification of mendicancy, one kind of beggar goes from door to door, publicly asking for alms. The other sits in his corner, hypocritically giving the impression even to himself that he is busy with God, but secretly he moves from door to door.
The term “dervish” was also applied to a group of non-affiliated, itinerant Sufis, sometimes known as Malamatis or Qalandars or Hyderis. In the company of others, the dervishes would engage in bizarre, deliberately offensive behavior, but because they claimed total reliance on God, they were often tolerated, and even rewarded, by domiciled, organizational Sufis.
“Dervish” entered the English language from association with the “Whirling Dervishes.” The name “Whirling Dervish” is derived from the frenzied yet orderly dance which they performed during musical assemblies. The real name of this group is the Mawlawis, since they were members of the order loyal to the Mawlana -- Jalal al-Din Rumi.
Under the Mamelukes, the standing of the dervishes was much higher than it is now in the eyes of canon lawyers and professed theologians. Women dervishes have their own religious services.
Dervishes constitute a class of Muslim devotees similar in some ways to Christian monks. Brotherhoods of dervishes are numerous, and each has its own rule, garb, rites, and methods of receiving novices and of initiating them. Not all orders conform strictly to the Muslim ceremonial and ritual law, and the occupations required by the different brotherhoods vary. Some dervishes are wanderers, depending on alms. Some are settled in monasteries, called takyas or khankas, where they observe special rites or devote themselves to mediation and penance. Other dervishes are ordinary tradesmen and laborers, performing the ceremonies of their order only on specific occasions. Still others form a class of religious entertainers who are hired to chant their dirge, or zikr, at public and private festivals. Frequently the devotees work themselves into a frenzy, becoming capable of remarkable acts of strength, then falling into a state of convulsion.
Although Muhammad was an advocate of poverty, it was after his time, when Islamic thought came into contact with other religions, such as Hinduism and those of Persia, that the dervish orders developed. Hadith ascribes the founding of these orders to the caliphs Abu Bakr and 'Ali in the seventh century of the Christian calendar.
Among the most widely known and perhaps the earliest of the dervishes are the Kadiris, whose order was founded in 1165 and who are known in Europe as the howling dervishes because of their peculiar chant. Also celebrated are the Rifais (1182), famous for their feats of eating glass and live coals and of swallowing swords; the order of Mawlaw or Mevlevi, the whirling, or dancing, dervishes, founded in 1273 by followers of the Persian mystic and poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Din ar-Rumi; and the Kalenderis, the calenders of the Arabian Nights, who must vow to travel perpetually.
darwish see dervish
Kadiris see dervish
Mawlawis see dervish
Malamatis see dervish
Qalandars see dervish
Hyderis see dervish
dervish (in Persian, darwish). The word “dervish” is the Persian (Farsi) word for “poor” or “beggar”. A dervish is a member of a Sufi order -- the Tariqa -- and is usually a mendicant or beggar. Paradoxically, the true beggar is one who does not beg at all but relies completely on God for the fulfillment of every material and spiritual need. In the Sufi classification of mendicancy, one kind of beggar goes from door to door, publicly asking for alms. The other sits in his corner, hypocritically giving the impression even to himself that he is busy with God, but secretly he moves from door to door.
The term “dervish” was also applied to a group of non-affiliated, itinerant Sufis, sometimes known as Malamatis or Qalandars or Hyderis. In the company of others, the dervishes would engage in bizarre, deliberately offensive behavior, but because they claimed total reliance on God, they were often tolerated, and even rewarded, by domiciled, organizational Sufis.
“Dervish” entered the English language from association with the “Whirling Dervishes.” The name “Whirling Dervish” is derived from the frenzied yet orderly dance which they performed during musical assemblies. The real name of this group is the Mawlawis, since they were members of the order loyal to the Mawlana -- Jalal al-Din Rumi.
Under the Mamelukes, the standing of the dervishes was much higher than it is now in the eyes of canon lawyers and professed theologians. Women dervishes have their own religious services.
Dervishes constitute a class of Muslim devotees similar in some ways to Christian monks. Brotherhoods of dervishes are numerous, and each has its own rule, garb, rites, and methods of receiving novices and of initiating them. Not all orders conform strictly to the Muslim ceremonial and ritual law, and the occupations required by the different brotherhoods vary. Some dervishes are wanderers, depending on alms. Some are settled in monasteries, called takyas or khankas, where they observe special rites or devote themselves to mediation and penance. Other dervishes are ordinary tradesmen and laborers, performing the ceremonies of their order only on specific occasions. Still others form a class of religious entertainers who are hired to chant their dirge, or zikr, at public and private festivals. Frequently the devotees work themselves into a frenzy, becoming capable of remarkable acts of strength, then falling into a state of convulsion.
Although Muhammad was an advocate of poverty, it was after his time, when Islamic thought came into contact with other religions, such as Hinduism and those of Persia, that the dervish orders developed. Hadith ascribes the founding of these orders to the caliphs Abu Bakr and 'Ali in the seventh century of the Christian calendar.
Among the most widely known and perhaps the earliest of the dervishes are the Kadiris, whose order was founded in 1165 and who are known in Europe as the howling dervishes because of their peculiar chant. Also celebrated are the Rifais (1182), famous for their feats of eating glass and live coals and of swallowing swords; the order of Mawlaw or Mevlevi, the whirling, or dancing, dervishes, founded in 1273 by followers of the Persian mystic and poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Din ar-Rumi; and the Kalenderis, the calenders of the Arabian Nights, who must vow to travel perpetually.
darwish see dervish
Kadiris see dervish
Mawlawis see dervish
Malamatis see dervish
Qalandars see dervish
Hyderis see dervish
Destour
Destour. At the beginning of the twentieth century, an organization known as the Young Tunisians cradled a new sense of Tunisian nationalism. Drawn primarily from the Turkish Mameluke aristocracy that ruled Tunisia prior to the French protectorate, the French-educated Young Tunisians aspired simply to make Tunisia modern. Anti-colonial sentiments grew after World War I, and in 1920 many of those who had belonged to the elite Young Tunisians joined with urban merchants and notables to form a more expressly political organization. As its name suggests, the Destour (Dustur, or Constitution) party sought a voice in the colonial government through a constitution and duly elected parliament. It did not, however, call for political independence.
Modern secularists of the next generation – including the young lawyer Habib Bourguiba – were initially attracted to the Destour but soon found their energies frustrated by its underlying conservatism. In 1934, they founded the Neo-Destour and rapidly captured the support of a rising middle class and the rural masses, whose hardships during two decades of economic depression had been ignored by both the French and earlier nationalist groups. The Neo-Destour led the drive to independence, and the new government was shaped under its direction in 1957.
Political opposition was not outlawed until 1962, but from the outset the government of independent Tunisia was dominated by a single party. In 1958, the Neo-Destour was restructured to parallel the administrative units at every level of government, and the distinction between state and party became progressively blurred. Through the Neo-Destour and the national organizations it controlled, the government disseminated its message and enacted its programs. In return for their loyalty, the party faithful could expect access to state patronage.
As president and “Supreme Combatant,” Bourguiba capitalized on his popularity within the party to promote a program of modernity and progress. With the tacit support of party leadership, he brought the religious establishment under the state’s control and introduced broad social reforms. On the economic front, a 1962 commitment to state-led development planning inspired the party to rename itself the Parti Socialiste Destourien (PSD, Destourian Socialist Party). Strong popular resistance, however, forced the program of agricultural cooperatives it had endorsed to be abandoned in 1969.
By this juncture, it was apparent that the PSD’s hold on society had slipped. From the late 1970s, an Islamist movement first known as the Mouvement de lat Tendance Islamique (Islamic Tendency Movement; later renamed Hizb al-Nahdah or Renaissance Party) gained popular appeal, and the PSD’s efforts to revive its own flagging support were unsuccessful. Its pool of patronage had shrunk, and it had few satisfying answers for those who criticized its pro-Western secularism.
Prime Minister Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (b. 1936) toppled the government of the aging Bourguiba in November 1987, and as a sign of new commitment to republican rule and intent to rejuvenate the party, he rechristened it the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique (RCD, Democratic Constitutional Rally) . When the 1989 legislative elections were opened to opposition parties, however, only Islamists running as independents made an effective showing against the RCD. Ben Ali’s government refused to authorize an Islamist party, and Tunisia continued to operate as a single-party state without benefit of the popular mandate it once could claim.
Dustur see Destour.
Constitution see Destour.
PSD see Destour.
Parti Socialiste Destourien see Destour.
Destourian Socialist Party see Destour.
Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique see Destour.
Destour. At the beginning of the twentieth century, an organization known as the Young Tunisians cradled a new sense of Tunisian nationalism. Drawn primarily from the Turkish Mameluke aristocracy that ruled Tunisia prior to the French protectorate, the French-educated Young Tunisians aspired simply to make Tunisia modern. Anti-colonial sentiments grew after World War I, and in 1920 many of those who had belonged to the elite Young Tunisians joined with urban merchants and notables to form a more expressly political organization. As its name suggests, the Destour (Dustur, or Constitution) party sought a voice in the colonial government through a constitution and duly elected parliament. It did not, however, call for political independence.
Modern secularists of the next generation – including the young lawyer Habib Bourguiba – were initially attracted to the Destour but soon found their energies frustrated by its underlying conservatism. In 1934, they founded the Neo-Destour and rapidly captured the support of a rising middle class and the rural masses, whose hardships during two decades of economic depression had been ignored by both the French and earlier nationalist groups. The Neo-Destour led the drive to independence, and the new government was shaped under its direction in 1957.
Political opposition was not outlawed until 1962, but from the outset the government of independent Tunisia was dominated by a single party. In 1958, the Neo-Destour was restructured to parallel the administrative units at every level of government, and the distinction between state and party became progressively blurred. Through the Neo-Destour and the national organizations it controlled, the government disseminated its message and enacted its programs. In return for their loyalty, the party faithful could expect access to state patronage.
As president and “Supreme Combatant,” Bourguiba capitalized on his popularity within the party to promote a program of modernity and progress. With the tacit support of party leadership, he brought the religious establishment under the state’s control and introduced broad social reforms. On the economic front, a 1962 commitment to state-led development planning inspired the party to rename itself the Parti Socialiste Destourien (PSD, Destourian Socialist Party). Strong popular resistance, however, forced the program of agricultural cooperatives it had endorsed to be abandoned in 1969.
By this juncture, it was apparent that the PSD’s hold on society had slipped. From the late 1970s, an Islamist movement first known as the Mouvement de lat Tendance Islamique (Islamic Tendency Movement; later renamed Hizb al-Nahdah or Renaissance Party) gained popular appeal, and the PSD’s efforts to revive its own flagging support were unsuccessful. Its pool of patronage had shrunk, and it had few satisfying answers for those who criticized its pro-Western secularism.
Prime Minister Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (b. 1936) toppled the government of the aging Bourguiba in November 1987, and as a sign of new commitment to republican rule and intent to rejuvenate the party, he rechristened it the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique (RCD, Democratic Constitutional Rally) . When the 1989 legislative elections were opened to opposition parties, however, only Islamists running as independents made an effective showing against the RCD. Ben Ali’s government refused to authorize an Islamist party, and Tunisia continued to operate as a single-party state without benefit of the popular mandate it once could claim.
Dustur see Destour.
Constitution see Destour.
PSD see Destour.
Parti Socialiste Destourien see Destour.
Destourian Socialist Party see Destour.
Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique see Destour.
Devil
Devil (in Arabic, Iblis). In the Qur’an, Iblis refuses to bow down before Adam and is accursed by God. He also tempts Adam and Eve in the Garden. His punishment is deferred until the Day of Judgment and he is allowed to tempt men, but not the true believers. At the end of time, he is to be thrown into the fire of Hell. Muslim tradition remains undecided as to whether Iblis was an angel or a jinn, but does not hesitate to consider him as the enemy of God and mankind.
In Islam, the Devil is known as Iblis (or Shayṭān or Shaitan). According to the Qur'an, God created Iblis out of "smokeless fire" (along with all of the other djinn) and created man out of clay. The primary characteristic of the Devil, besides hubris, is that he has no power other than the power to cast evil suggestions into the heart of men and women.
The word "Iblis" may be derived from the Arabic verbal root balasa, meaning "he despaired"; therefore, the linguistic meaning of Iblis would be "he/it that causes despair". However, some maintain an etymological derivation from the Greek "Diabolos".
"Shayṭān" or "Satan" is both a noun and an adjective. As a noun, it means "adversary", "enemy", "opponent," or "rebel" and as an adjective it means "adversarial," "opposing," or "evil." In popular Islamic culture, Shaitan is often simply translated as "The Devil," but can refer to any of the beings who rebelled against Allah. Shaytan has a similar meaning and origin to the Christian word Satan.
According to basic Islamic teachings, God created three intelligent races: Angels, jinns, and humans, of which the latter two have been granted free will to choose between good and evil.
Iblis was a jinn and a devoted servant of God. He attained a very high status and was brought close with the angels. God knew Iblis harbored ill intentions, however, and this was the reason for his name, Iblis "Desperate," or "despair."
The angels do not have free will and simply do not sin because they were not granted the freedom by God to disobey. When God created Adam, He commanded all the angels and jinn to prostrate to him as Adam was deemed "the Best of Creation". All the angels and jinn did so, except Iblis, who refused to obey.
Iblis was proud and arrogant and considered himself superior to Adam, since Adam was made from clay and Iblis was created from smokeless fire. For this act of disobedience, God cursed him to Hell for eternity, but gave him respite until the Day of Judgment, after Iblis requested it. Iblis obtained permission from God and vowed that he would use this time to lead all human men and women astray to Hell as a way of revenge against them. By refusing to obey God’s order he was thrown out of Paradise and thereafter he was called “Shaitan”.
In Islamic theology, the Shaytan and his minions are "whisperers", who whisper into the hearts of men and women, urging them to commit sin. This is where the desire to sin comes from, according to Islam.
The Qur'an provides a supplication for mankind, aimed at fighting the tempting of ash-Shaytan and his minions:
In the Qur'an's version of the story of Adam and Eve, Shaytan tempted them in the Garden of Eden, to eat of the forbidden tree - thereby exposing to them their nakedness and awakening man's modesty, shyness and sexuality. As they became suddenly aware of these things, they attempted to cover their modesty with leaves.
Adam and Eve, upon being questioned by God, apologized for falling for temptation, and were forgiven. After that God placed them on earth (in accordance with his plan, that he communicated to the angels before creating Adam) to live out their lives and spawn the continuing family tree which eventually lead to the Human race as it is today. For Shaitan, this was a major victory. Now also living on earth, God granted him eternal life until day of judgment to continue to misguide man, as per Islamic theology, in an attempt to reduce man to filth and corruption.
Iblis see Devil
Shaytan see Devil
Shaitan see Devil
Satan see Devil
Diabolos see Devil
Devil (in Arabic, Iblis). In the Qur’an, Iblis refuses to bow down before Adam and is accursed by God. He also tempts Adam and Eve in the Garden. His punishment is deferred until the Day of Judgment and he is allowed to tempt men, but not the true believers. At the end of time, he is to be thrown into the fire of Hell. Muslim tradition remains undecided as to whether Iblis was an angel or a jinn, but does not hesitate to consider him as the enemy of God and mankind.
In Islam, the Devil is known as Iblis (or Shayṭān or Shaitan). According to the Qur'an, God created Iblis out of "smokeless fire" (along with all of the other djinn) and created man out of clay. The primary characteristic of the Devil, besides hubris, is that he has no power other than the power to cast evil suggestions into the heart of men and women.
The word "Iblis" may be derived from the Arabic verbal root balasa, meaning "he despaired"; therefore, the linguistic meaning of Iblis would be "he/it that causes despair". However, some maintain an etymological derivation from the Greek "Diabolos".
"Shayṭān" or "Satan" is both a noun and an adjective. As a noun, it means "adversary", "enemy", "opponent," or "rebel" and as an adjective it means "adversarial," "opposing," or "evil." In popular Islamic culture, Shaitan is often simply translated as "The Devil," but can refer to any of the beings who rebelled against Allah. Shaytan has a similar meaning and origin to the Christian word Satan.
According to basic Islamic teachings, God created three intelligent races: Angels, jinns, and humans, of which the latter two have been granted free will to choose between good and evil.
Iblis was a jinn and a devoted servant of God. He attained a very high status and was brought close with the angels. God knew Iblis harbored ill intentions, however, and this was the reason for his name, Iblis "Desperate," or "despair."
The angels do not have free will and simply do not sin because they were not granted the freedom by God to disobey. When God created Adam, He commanded all the angels and jinn to prostrate to him as Adam was deemed "the Best of Creation". All the angels and jinn did so, except Iblis, who refused to obey.
Iblis was proud and arrogant and considered himself superior to Adam, since Adam was made from clay and Iblis was created from smokeless fire. For this act of disobedience, God cursed him to Hell for eternity, but gave him respite until the Day of Judgment, after Iblis requested it. Iblis obtained permission from God and vowed that he would use this time to lead all human men and women astray to Hell as a way of revenge against them. By refusing to obey God’s order he was thrown out of Paradise and thereafter he was called “Shaitan”.
In Islamic theology, the Shaytan and his minions are "whisperers", who whisper into the hearts of men and women, urging them to commit sin. This is where the desire to sin comes from, according to Islam.
The Qur'an provides a supplication for mankind, aimed at fighting the tempting of ash-Shaytan and his minions:
In the Qur'an's version of the story of Adam and Eve, Shaytan tempted them in the Garden of Eden, to eat of the forbidden tree - thereby exposing to them their nakedness and awakening man's modesty, shyness and sexuality. As they became suddenly aware of these things, they attempted to cover their modesty with leaves.
Adam and Eve, upon being questioned by God, apologized for falling for temptation, and were forgiven. After that God placed them on earth (in accordance with his plan, that he communicated to the angels before creating Adam) to live out their lives and spawn the continuing family tree which eventually lead to the Human race as it is today. For Shaitan, this was a major victory. Now also living on earth, God granted him eternal life until day of judgment to continue to misguide man, as per Islamic theology, in an attempt to reduce man to filth and corruption.
Iblis see Devil
Shaytan see Devil
Shaitan see Devil
Satan see Devil
Diabolos see Devil
Devil Worshippers
Devil Worshippers (Yazidis). Practitioners of a religion with around 700,000 members worldwide. The largest group of Yazidis lives in Iraq, near Mosul, but there are small communities in Syria, Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia. Researchers believe that the Yazidi creed has elements from Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The two religious books of the Yazidis have Arabic text: The Book of Revelation and The Black Book. The Yazidis call themselves Dasin, while the term “Yazidism” probably comes from the Persian word "ized" -- “angel.” The name Yazidism is connected to the sixth caliph, Yazid (680-683). From a Shi'a perspective, Yazid was one of world history’s most hated men. Yazid was highly disliked by most Sunnis as well. However, there is little evidence showing what role Yazid played in the founding, or development, of Yazidism.
The Yazidi pantheon has God on top, but God is only the Creator, and is no longer an acting force. The acting force is represented by Malak Ta’us and Shaykh Adii. Shaykh Adii may have been caliph Yazid, but in any event, he was a man who rose to divinity through transmigration, and is now an acting and good deity. Shaykh Adii acts in cooperation with Malak Ta’us, the peacock angel that had fallen into disgrace, but who repented. Malak Ta’us filled seven jars of tears through 7,000 years. His tears were used to extinguish the fires of Hell. Therefore, there is no longer a Hell in the theology of Malak Ta’us. Yazidism has six other minor deities, which are also honored.
The prayer in Yazidism must be performed in good distance from non-Yazidis, twice a day, and in the direction of the sun. The prayer is dedicated to Malak Ta’us. Saturday is the day of rest, but it is Wednesday that is the holy day. In December, a three day fast is performed. There is an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Shaykh Adii, north of Mosul in Iraq, through six days in late August. This pilgrimage is the most important ritual of Yazidism. Central to this celebration are bathing in the river, washing of figures of Malak Ta’us, processions, music, hymns, ecstatic songs, and dances performed by the priests. Other elements are lighting of hundreds of oil lamps at the tombs of Shaykh Adii and other saints’ tombs, offerings of special foods and cooking of a sacrificed ox. Important parts of the rituals here have never been seen by outsiders, and are therefore unknown.
Childhood baptism is important, and is performed by a Shaykh, a religious leader. Circumcision for boys is performed soon after the baptism, but is not compulsory. Burials are done immediately after death, and the hands are crossed.
The Yazidis are organized much like the Kurds, with tribes headed by a chief. There are very strong ties between the laity and the religious leaders. Almost all Yazidis speak Kurdish. The Yazidis practice no intermarrying with other Kurds, and have no communion with them.
The Yazidis believe that they are the descendants of Adam only, while the rest of the world descended from Eve, and are hence inferior. It is impossible to convert to Yazidism, you must be born one. The strongest punishment among Yazidis is expulsion, which means that your soul is lost forever. Monogamy is practiced, but the chief has the right to take several wives. Divorce is difficult to get, as this only comes from adultery, and three witnesses are needed. However, if a husband stays abroad for more than a year, he is automatically divorced from his wife, and has also lost the right to remarry inside the Yazidi community.
The reason for the Yazidis reputation of being devil worshippers is connected to the other name of Malak Ta’us, Shaytan, the same name as the Qur’an’s for Satan. However, there is little suggesting that the Yazidis worship Malak Ta’us as if he was equal to the Qur’an’s or the Bible’s devil. The Yazidis have never been regarded as Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book) and they have suffered much hardship at the hands of their Muslim neighbors.
Yazidis see Devil Worshippers
Dasin see Devil Worshippers
Devil Worshippers (Yazidis). Practitioners of a religion with around 700,000 members worldwide. The largest group of Yazidis lives in Iraq, near Mosul, but there are small communities in Syria, Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia. Researchers believe that the Yazidi creed has elements from Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The two religious books of the Yazidis have Arabic text: The Book of Revelation and The Black Book. The Yazidis call themselves Dasin, while the term “Yazidism” probably comes from the Persian word "ized" -- “angel.” The name Yazidism is connected to the sixth caliph, Yazid (680-683). From a Shi'a perspective, Yazid was one of world history’s most hated men. Yazid was highly disliked by most Sunnis as well. However, there is little evidence showing what role Yazid played in the founding, or development, of Yazidism.
The Yazidi pantheon has God on top, but God is only the Creator, and is no longer an acting force. The acting force is represented by Malak Ta’us and Shaykh Adii. Shaykh Adii may have been caliph Yazid, but in any event, he was a man who rose to divinity through transmigration, and is now an acting and good deity. Shaykh Adii acts in cooperation with Malak Ta’us, the peacock angel that had fallen into disgrace, but who repented. Malak Ta’us filled seven jars of tears through 7,000 years. His tears were used to extinguish the fires of Hell. Therefore, there is no longer a Hell in the theology of Malak Ta’us. Yazidism has six other minor deities, which are also honored.
The prayer in Yazidism must be performed in good distance from non-Yazidis, twice a day, and in the direction of the sun. The prayer is dedicated to Malak Ta’us. Saturday is the day of rest, but it is Wednesday that is the holy day. In December, a three day fast is performed. There is an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Shaykh Adii, north of Mosul in Iraq, through six days in late August. This pilgrimage is the most important ritual of Yazidism. Central to this celebration are bathing in the river, washing of figures of Malak Ta’us, processions, music, hymns, ecstatic songs, and dances performed by the priests. Other elements are lighting of hundreds of oil lamps at the tombs of Shaykh Adii and other saints’ tombs, offerings of special foods and cooking of a sacrificed ox. Important parts of the rituals here have never been seen by outsiders, and are therefore unknown.
Childhood baptism is important, and is performed by a Shaykh, a religious leader. Circumcision for boys is performed soon after the baptism, but is not compulsory. Burials are done immediately after death, and the hands are crossed.
The Yazidis are organized much like the Kurds, with tribes headed by a chief. There are very strong ties between the laity and the religious leaders. Almost all Yazidis speak Kurdish. The Yazidis practice no intermarrying with other Kurds, and have no communion with them.
The Yazidis believe that they are the descendants of Adam only, while the rest of the world descended from Eve, and are hence inferior. It is impossible to convert to Yazidism, you must be born one. The strongest punishment among Yazidis is expulsion, which means that your soul is lost forever. Monogamy is practiced, but the chief has the right to take several wives. Divorce is difficult to get, as this only comes from adultery, and three witnesses are needed. However, if a husband stays abroad for more than a year, he is automatically divorced from his wife, and has also lost the right to remarry inside the Yazidi community.
The reason for the Yazidis reputation of being devil worshippers is connected to the other name of Malak Ta’us, Shaytan, the same name as the Qur’an’s for Satan. However, there is little suggesting that the Yazidis worship Malak Ta’us as if he was equal to the Qur’an’s or the Bible’s devil. The Yazidis have never been regarded as Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book) and they have suffered much hardship at the hands of their Muslim neighbors.
Yazidis see Devil Worshippers
Dasin see Devil Worshippers
Dhahabi
Dhahabi (Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi) (1274-1348). Arab historian and theologian from Damascus. He was a compiler, but his works are distinguished by careful composition and constant references to his authorities. His greatest work is a History of Islam, which begins with the genealogy of the Prophet and ends with the year 1300. {See also Muhammad.}
Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn `Uthman ibn Qaymaz ibn `Abd Allah, Shams al-Din Abu `Abd Allah al-Turkmani al-Diyarbakri al-Fariqi al-Dimashqi al-Dhahabi al-Shafi`i, known as Al-Dhahabi, was a Shafi'i Muhaddith and historian of Islam. Al-Dhahabi was born in Damascus in 1274 C.C./673 AH, where his family had lived from the time of his grandfather `Uthman. He sometimes identified himself as Ibn al-Dhahabi (son of the goldsmith) in reference to his father's profession. He began his study of hadith at age eighteen, travelling from Damascus to Baalbek, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Nabulus, Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Hijaz, and elsewhere, after which he returned to Damascus, where he taught and authored many works and achieved wide renown as a critic and expert examiner of the hadith, encyclopedic historian and biographer, and foremost authority in the canonical readings of the Qur'an. He lost his sight two years before he died, leaving three children: his eldest daughter Amat al-`Aziz and his two sons `Abd Allah and Abu Hurayra `Abd al-Rahman. The latter taught the hadith masters Ibn Nasir al-Din al-Dimashqi and Ibn Hajar, to whom he transmitted several works authored or narrated by his father.
Al-Dhahabi authored nearly a hundred works, some of them of considerable size. Among his works are:
* Tarikh al-Islam al-kabir (Major History of Islam), 36 volumes, the largest biographical encyclopedia in Islam;
* Siyar a`lam al-nubala (The Lives of Noble Figures), 23 volumes, a unique encyclopedia of biographical history;
* Tadhhib Tahdhib al-Kamal, an abridgement of al-Mizzi's abridgement of al-Maqdisee's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, a compendium of historical biographies for hadith narrators cited in the six major hadith collections;
o Al-Kashif fi Ma`rifa Man Lahu Riwaya fi al-Kutub al-Sitta, an abridgment of the Tadhhib;
+ Al-Mujarrad fi Asma' Rijal al-Kutub al-Sitta, an abridgment of the Kashif;
* Mukhtasar Kitab al-Wahm wa al-Iham li Ibn al-Qattan;
* Mukhtasar Sunan al-Bayhaqi, an abridgement of Bayhaqi's Sunan;
* Mukhtasar al-Mustadrak li al-Hakim, an abdridgement of Hakim's Al-Mustadrak alaa al-Sahihain;
* Al-Amsar Dhawat al-Athar (Cities Rich in Historical Relics), which begins with the description of Madina al-Munawwara;
* Al-Tajrid fi Asma' al-Sahaba, a dictionary of the Companions;
* Tadhkirat al-huffaz (The Memorial of the Hadith Masters), a chronological history of the biography of hadith masters;
* Al-Mu`in fi Tabaqat al-Muhaddithin, a compendium of hadith scholars (Muhaddithin);
* Tabaqat al-Qurra (Biography-Layers of the Qur'anic Scholars);
* Duwal al-Islam, a condensed biographical history with emphasis on political figures and events; and
* Al-Kaba'ir (The Enormities), his most widely circulated book.
Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi see Dhahabi
Dhahabi (Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi) (1274-1348). Arab historian and theologian from Damascus. He was a compiler, but his works are distinguished by careful composition and constant references to his authorities. His greatest work is a History of Islam, which begins with the genealogy of the Prophet and ends with the year 1300. {See also Muhammad.}
Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn `Uthman ibn Qaymaz ibn `Abd Allah, Shams al-Din Abu `Abd Allah al-Turkmani al-Diyarbakri al-Fariqi al-Dimashqi al-Dhahabi al-Shafi`i, known as Al-Dhahabi, was a Shafi'i Muhaddith and historian of Islam. Al-Dhahabi was born in Damascus in 1274 C.C./673 AH, where his family had lived from the time of his grandfather `Uthman. He sometimes identified himself as Ibn al-Dhahabi (son of the goldsmith) in reference to his father's profession. He began his study of hadith at age eighteen, travelling from Damascus to Baalbek, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Nabulus, Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Hijaz, and elsewhere, after which he returned to Damascus, where he taught and authored many works and achieved wide renown as a critic and expert examiner of the hadith, encyclopedic historian and biographer, and foremost authority in the canonical readings of the Qur'an. He lost his sight two years before he died, leaving three children: his eldest daughter Amat al-`Aziz and his two sons `Abd Allah and Abu Hurayra `Abd al-Rahman. The latter taught the hadith masters Ibn Nasir al-Din al-Dimashqi and Ibn Hajar, to whom he transmitted several works authored or narrated by his father.
Al-Dhahabi authored nearly a hundred works, some of them of considerable size. Among his works are:
* Tarikh al-Islam al-kabir (Major History of Islam), 36 volumes, the largest biographical encyclopedia in Islam;
* Siyar a`lam al-nubala (The Lives of Noble Figures), 23 volumes, a unique encyclopedia of biographical history;
* Tadhhib Tahdhib al-Kamal, an abridgement of al-Mizzi's abridgement of al-Maqdisee's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, a compendium of historical biographies for hadith narrators cited in the six major hadith collections;
o Al-Kashif fi Ma`rifa Man Lahu Riwaya fi al-Kutub al-Sitta, an abridgment of the Tadhhib;
+ Al-Mujarrad fi Asma' Rijal al-Kutub al-Sitta, an abridgment of the Kashif;
* Mukhtasar Kitab al-Wahm wa al-Iham li Ibn al-Qattan;
* Mukhtasar Sunan al-Bayhaqi, an abridgement of Bayhaqi's Sunan;
* Mukhtasar al-Mustadrak li al-Hakim, an abdridgement of Hakim's Al-Mustadrak alaa al-Sahihain;
* Al-Amsar Dhawat al-Athar (Cities Rich in Historical Relics), which begins with the description of Madina al-Munawwara;
* Al-Tajrid fi Asma' al-Sahaba, a dictionary of the Companions;
* Tadhkirat al-huffaz (The Memorial of the Hadith Masters), a chronological history of the biography of hadith masters;
* Al-Mu`in fi Tabaqat al-Muhaddithin, a compendium of hadith scholars (Muhaddithin);
* Tabaqat al-Qurra (Biography-Layers of the Qur'anic Scholars);
* Duwal al-Islam, a condensed biographical history with emphasis on political figures and events; and
* Al-Kaba'ir (The Enormities), his most widely circulated book.
Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi see Dhahabi
Dhakir
Dhakir (Qasim Bey Dhakir) (c.1786-1857). Foremost Azerbaijani poet and satirist. He relentlessly criticized the religious fanaticism of the mullahs, the corruption of the local aristocracy and the Czarist administration officials.
Qasim Bey Dhakir see Dhakir
Dhakir (Qasim Bey Dhakir) (c.1786-1857). Foremost Azerbaijani poet and satirist. He relentlessly criticized the religious fanaticism of the mullahs, the corruption of the local aristocracy and the Czarist administration officials.
Qasim Bey Dhakir see Dhakir
Dhimmi
Dhimmi. Muslim juridical term for Christians and Jews, sometimes Zoroastrians, Mandeans, or even Hindus, living in a society governed by Muslim rulers and law. Dhimmis have limited autonomy, but have full rights to practice their religion and are secured by the full protection of the rulers. Earlier there was a specific tax, a jizya (see Qur’an, Sura 9:29), that dhimmis had to pay to receive these benefits. Dhimmis who did not pay this tax would either convert to Islam or face the death penalty. This tax, higher than the tax Muslims had to pay, was in several occasions one of the most important sources of income for the rulers, and therefore they were often little inclined to encourage conversion to Islam, as this would represent a decrease in their income.
It was an early endeavor of the shari'a that added details to the regulations of the jizya. These new regulations established that Christians could keep all of their churches and convents, but they were not allowed to erect new structures nor to restore ruined buildings. The dhimmis had to give lodging to Muslims for up to three days and they had to show Muslims respect. Dhimmis could not perform public ceremonies and no crosses could be used in Muslim quarters. They could not ride on horseback with saddles, they could neither carry weapons nor sell alcoholic beverages to Muslims.
Christians were not allowed to build houses taller than their neighbors houses. In public, they had to carry visible tokens of the religion to which they belonged. If there was a case at the court, Muslim statements were considered of more value than the ones from Christians. However, there were no limitations to the professions which could be pursued.
Later, there were more regulations imposed. For example, in 853, when Caliph al-Mutawakkil forbade dhimmis to ride on horses, they had to stick to donkeys and mules. In fourteenth century Egypt, Jews had to carry a yellow turban, Christians a blue one.
Nevertheless, there was less distance between the people of the different religions. People lived side by side. Non-Muslims could hold the highest positions in Islamic society at a time when Jews in Europe had few or no social rights.
Another term for dhimmis is ahl al-kitab -- “People of the Book”. However, this is more of a theological term than a juridical one.
ahl al-kitab see Dhimmi.
People of the Book see Dhimmi.
Dhimmi. Muslim juridical term for Christians and Jews, sometimes Zoroastrians, Mandeans, or even Hindus, living in a society governed by Muslim rulers and law. Dhimmis have limited autonomy, but have full rights to practice their religion and are secured by the full protection of the rulers. Earlier there was a specific tax, a jizya (see Qur’an, Sura 9:29), that dhimmis had to pay to receive these benefits. Dhimmis who did not pay this tax would either convert to Islam or face the death penalty. This tax, higher than the tax Muslims had to pay, was in several occasions one of the most important sources of income for the rulers, and therefore they were often little inclined to encourage conversion to Islam, as this would represent a decrease in their income.
It was an early endeavor of the shari'a that added details to the regulations of the jizya. These new regulations established that Christians could keep all of their churches and convents, but they were not allowed to erect new structures nor to restore ruined buildings. The dhimmis had to give lodging to Muslims for up to three days and they had to show Muslims respect. Dhimmis could not perform public ceremonies and no crosses could be used in Muslim quarters. They could not ride on horseback with saddles, they could neither carry weapons nor sell alcoholic beverages to Muslims.
Christians were not allowed to build houses taller than their neighbors houses. In public, they had to carry visible tokens of the religion to which they belonged. If there was a case at the court, Muslim statements were considered of more value than the ones from Christians. However, there were no limitations to the professions which could be pursued.
Later, there were more regulations imposed. For example, in 853, when Caliph al-Mutawakkil forbade dhimmis to ride on horses, they had to stick to donkeys and mules. In fourteenth century Egypt, Jews had to carry a yellow turban, Christians a blue one.
Nevertheless, there was less distance between the people of the different religions. People lived side by side. Non-Muslims could hold the highest positions in Islamic society at a time when Jews in Europe had few or no social rights.
Another term for dhimmis is ahl al-kitab -- “People of the Book”. However, this is more of a theological term than a juridical one.
ahl al-kitab see Dhimmi.
People of the Book see Dhimmi.
Dhu’l-Faqar
Dhu’l-Faqar. Name of the famous sword which the Prophet obtained as booty in the battle of Badr. The term has often been inscribed on finely engraved swords.
Dhu’l-Faqar. Name of the famous sword which the Prophet obtained as booty in the battle of Badr. The term has often been inscribed on finely engraved swords.
Dhu'l-Himma
Dhu’l-Himma (Dhat al-Himma). Name of the principal heroine of a romance epic of Arab chivalry. The main subject is the Arab war against the Byzantines during the first three centuries of Islam.
The full title of the romance epic is The Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma and Her Son, 'Abdelwahhab. The first three short episodes of the epic go back in time, introducing the generations from the Banu Kilab tribe leading up to Fatima, the Dhu'l-Himma -- The Woman of Noble Purpose. In the fourth episode, Fatima is born. It is explained that the wives of the brothers Zalim and Mazlum are both pregnant. The brothers agree that he whose wife has a son will become the chief of the Banu Kilab clan, with authority over all the Arabs in the region but that if both have sons or daughters they would continue their shared leadership.
Zalim's wife gave birth to a son, Walid, but Mazlum's wife gave birth to a girl. Mazlum was so disappointed the he gives the infant to a servingwoman to raise in secret and lets everyone think he had a son who died. This sets the stage for what would be a source of constant conflict between the two brothers, and their off-spring.
Dhu’l-Himma (Dhat al-Himma). Name of the principal heroine of a romance epic of Arab chivalry. The main subject is the Arab war against the Byzantines during the first three centuries of Islam.
The full title of the romance epic is The Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma and Her Son, 'Abdelwahhab. The first three short episodes of the epic go back in time, introducing the generations from the Bani Kilab tribe leading up to Fatima, the Dhu'l-Himma -- The Woman of Noble Purpose. In the fourth episode, Fatima is born. It is explained that the wives of the brothers Zalim and Mazlum are both pregnant. The brothers agree that he whose wife has a son will become the chief of the Banu Kilab clan, with authority over all the Arabs in the region but that if both have sons or daughters they would continue their shared leadership.
Zalim's wife gave birth to a son, Walid, but Mazlum's wife gave birth to a girl. Mazlum was so disappointed the he gave the infant to a servingwoman to raise in secret and let everyone think he had a son who died. This set the stage for what would be a source of constant conflict between the two brothers, and their off-spring.
The girl baby was named Fatima and was raised away from her parents. When another clan, the Banu Tayy, raided the Banu Kilab lands, the child was among those kidnapped and brought back to Banu Tayy territory. Fatima was handed over to a troop leader to serve as a servant. With the Banu Tayy, Fatima learned fighting skills by watching warriors at practice, and quickly picked up these and many other skills. Eventually, Fatima became a Banu Tayy warrior, -- a role that would bring her into direct conflict with her father, her uncle and, most importantly, her cousin, Walid.
Ultimately, Fatima came back into the fold and rejoined the Banu Kilab. She was now acknowledged by Mazlum as being his daughter. She also caught the eye of her cousin, Walid. Walid became infatuated with his warrior cousin Fatima and determined to not only marry her, but also to subjugate her. Walid, and his father Zalim, had the more general goal of taking complete control and of sidelining Mazlum, thereby creating tension between the two families.
Fatima came to loathe the creepy Walid. However, beyond that, she had no interest in marriage. She is reputed to have said:
"I am a woman who does not seek intimacy with men. It seems to me that God does not mean for me to be hidden away or confined. As you see, I like to fight. I am accustomed to swords and spears, not women's quarters. Caliph of the Merciful, my sword is my home. The dust provides my cosmetics. My horse is my family. What would I do with Walid or with any man?"
Despite Fatima's protestations, Walid repeatedly wooed her and tried to force her into marriage, and repeatedly Fatima repelled his advances. It got to the point that Walid even challenged Fatima to battle with the winner getting his or her way. However, when Fatima easily defeated Walid in combat, Walid still persisted in attempting to woo her.
Fatima was ultimately forced into marriage. although it was deemed to be a marriage in name only. She continued to keep Walid at a distance.
Walid continued to pine for Fatima. As her husband, he feels entitled to consummate the marriage. Unable to even approach Fatima, he resorts to drugging her. While Fatima is unconscious, Walid violates Fatima.
From this violation, Fatima became pregnant. She had a child. The child was named 'Abdelwahhab, and to the surprise of everyone, 'Abdelwahhab was black.
The black skin of 'Abdelwahhab led Walid to believe that Fatima had dishonored him. Walid lamented by saying:
"Fatima's infidelity is a personal offense. She renounced me for the preposterous reason that she prefers slaves! Now she has a black bastard, and she claims it's mine! The kid is as dark as night, and we're both fair. How can this be?"
The paternity of the child was adjudicated. In the adjudication it was noted that 'Abdelwahhab and Walid shared the same eyes, bone structure, and hands, even to the fingertips, and that, therefore 'Abdelwahhab was Walid's son. However, Walid refused to accept the truth of the matter and continued to feel wronged, further escalating the conflict between him and his father on one side and Fatima and her father on the other.
Eventually, Walid and Zalim went so far as to abandon their religion (Islam) and join the Rum -- the Greek Orthodox Christians living within the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia. Zalim was willing to do and say whatever was necessary to appease the Christians:
"We have come to learn that yours is the true religion. It is my duty to assist you in conquering the lands of Islam, destroying the Ka'ba and mosques, and capturing as many people possible."
Meanwhile, Fatima continued nobly and honorably -- impressing even the Byzantine emperor with her fighting prowess and cleverness when Constantinople was threatened by the King of Portugal.
Over time, the legend of Fatima grew.
Dhu'l-Himma or Sirat Dhu'l-Himma ("The Tale of Lady Dhu'l-Himma) became a popular epic of Arabic literature regarding the Arab-Byzantine war of the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods.
In its 1909 Cairo edition, the tale comprises 70 sections in seven volumes and 5,084 pages. The subject matter of the epic draws from the long history of Arab-Byzantine wars under the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphs, until the reign of al-Wathiq in the mid-9th century, with elements from later events, focusing on the exploits of two rival Arab tribes, the Banu Kilab, who furnished the main characters, and the Banu Sulaym.
The tale begins with the story of the rivalry of the Banu Kilab and the Banu Sulaym during the early Umayyad period, when the Sulaym held command over both. The tale continues with the assumption of command by the Kilab and the participation of the Kilabite al-Sahsah in the campaigns of the Umayyad prince Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik against the Eastern Romans, including the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople, his adventures in the desert and his death.
Al-Sahsah's two sons, Zalim and Mazlum, quarrelled over their father's inheritance. Mazlum's daughter, Fatima, the eponymous heroine of the epic, was abducted by the Banu Tayy, among whom she became a fierce warrior and was named al-Dalhama (Dhu'l-Himma). This is possibly the feminine form of the name Dalham ("wolf"), but was more usually interpreted as a corruption of the honorific Dhat al-Himma -- "woman of noble purpose", which also appears in the tale along with other variants.
At the time of the Abbasid Revolution (c. 750), the Sulaym under Abdallah ibn Marwan regained the leadership of the Arab tribes thanks to their support of the Abbasids. Through the intervention of Fatima, the Kilab acquiesced to this change, and together with the Kilab, the Sulaym participated in the renewed border warfare with the Romans.
The Kilab settled in the city of Malatya, while the Sulaym took over the fortress of Hisn al-Kawkab. Fatima's cousin, al-Harith (also known as Walid, the son of Zalim), managed to make her his wife thanks to a drug, and she bore a son, Abd al-Wahhab ('Abdelwahhab), who was born with black skin. When Abd al-Wahhab grew up, he took over the leadership of the Kilab, and his and his mother's subsequent exploits in the wars against Byzantium were the main theme of the epic.
Abd al-Wahhab was assisted by the cunning al-Battal, a Sulaymi who joined the Kilab, and who was opposed by the rest of the Sulaym, including the treacherous qadi (judge) Uqba, who had secretly converted to Christianity; the amir of Malatya, Amr ibn Abdallah (or Ubaydallah), who distrusted the Kilab even though he owed his life to Fatima. At the same time, Fatima's husband, al-Harith (Walid), went over to the Byzantines with a band of Arabs and converted to Christianity. In turn, the Muslims found allies among the Romans, such as the crypto-Muslim, Maris, the Byzantine emperor's chamberlain, and Yanis (John), the lord of a border fortress.
The epic follows its protagonists in a series of campaigns and adventures during the reigns of Harun al-Rashid, al-Amin, al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim. To the end, the narrative is dominated by the Kilab-Sulaym rivalry, fuelled by Uqba's treacherous hounding of the Kilab and his spying for the Romans. The Kilab, including Fatima and 'Abdelwahhab, were captured several times by both the Romans and the Abbasid caliph due to Uqba's machinations, only to be set free after various adventures. Al-Battal played a crucial counterpart to the traitor Uqba, with each one seeking to capture and eliminate the other. Al-Battal often saves the day through his exploits, which brought him as far as Western Europe and the Maghreb.
Successive Eastern Roman rulers attacked and sacked Malatya, but were either driven off or defeated by the exploits of Fatima and 'Abdelwahhab. However, on the other hand, the Kilab frequently aided the Roman emperors in recovering their capital, Constantinople, from usurpers or from Western (Frankish) invaders.
Ultimately, Uqba's treachery is unmasked, and in the last, and longest, section he is pursued bty Caliph al-Mu'tasim and the Kilabit heroes across several countries from Spain to Yemen, before being crucified before Constantinople. On its return, the Mulim armhy is ambushed in a defile by the Romans, and only 400 men, including the Caliph, al-Battal, Fatima, and 'Abdelwahhab, manage to escape, but the amir Amr was killed.
In retaliation, al-Mu'tasim's successor al-Wathiq launched a campaign against Constantinople, where he installed a Muslim governor and rebuilt the mosque first constructed by Maslama and al-Sahsah. The tale then describes the death of Fatima and 'Abdelwahhab, as well as the final days of al-Battal, who lived long enough to witness the resumption of Roman attacks later in the century.
Al-Battal dies at Ancyra and his tomb remained hidden, until the Turks (in some versions the Mamelukes) arrived and re-discovered it.
Delhemma see Dhu'l-Himma
Dhat al-Himma see Dhu’l-Himma
Dhu’l-Khalsa
Dhu’l-Khalsa. Name of the sacred stone which was worshipped by several tribes in a place some 190 kilometers south of Mecca.
Dhu’l-Khalsa. Name of the sacred stone which was worshipped by several tribes in a place some 190 kilometers south of Mecca.
Dhu’l-Nunids
Dhu’l-Nunids. See Dhun-Nunids.
Dhun-Nunids see Dhu’l-Nunids.
Dhu’l-Nunids. See Dhun-Nunids.
Dhun-Nunids see Dhu’l-Nunids.
Dhu’l-nun Misr
Dhu’l-nun Misr (796-859). Ninth century Egyptian Sufi master. The name Dhu’l-nun Misri means “the Egyptian man of the fish”.
Imprisoned by the Mu’tazilites during their brief rule, Dhu’l-nun Misri was later set free and acquired fame for his penetrating scholarship in several fields, including philosophy and alchemy. His status as an exemplary Sufi was secured by numerous anecdotes ascribed to him. He composed lucid Arabic poetry and prayers of unsurpassed beauty. Whether or not he originated the doctrinal views which later Sufis attributed to him, Dhu’l-nun Misri seems to have been fond of intimating the kernel of mystical truth through opposite yet complementary concepts, e.g., knowledge and insight, fear and shame, and God’s beauty and wrath, which together comprise perfection.
Dhul-Nun al-Misri was considered the Patron Saint of the Physicians in the early Islamic era of Egypt, and is credited with having introduced the concept of Gnosis into Islam. His full name is Dhul-Nun Abu Faid Thawban ibn Ibrahim.
Dhul-Nun, literately "Of the Nun", is a name that is also given to Jonah in Islamic folklore, as "nun" in ancient Arabic meant "big fish"/"whale", as it did in Aramaic where it also means "snake".
His nickname al-Misri means 'the Egyptian', a name apparently given to him by his fellows who were not themselves of Coptic decent as he was, or during his travels outside of Egypt.
Dhul-Nun al-Misri is considered among the most prominent saints of early Sufism and holds a position in the Sufi chronicles as high as Junayd (d.910) and Bayazid (d.874). He studied under various teachers and travelled extensively in Arabia and Syria. The Muslim scholar and Sufi Sahl al-Tustari was one of Dhul-Nun al-Misri's students. In 829, he was arrested on a charge of heresy and sent to prison in Baghdad, but after examination he was released on the caliph's orders to return to Cairo, where he died in 859. His tombstone has been preserved.
A legendary alchemist, Dhul-Nun al-Misri is supposed to have known the secret of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. His sayings and poems, which are extremely dense and rich in mystical imagery, emphasize knowledge or gnosis (marifah) more than fear (makhafah) or love (mahabbah), the other two major paths of spiritual realization in Sufism. None of his written works have survived, but a vast collection of poems, sayings, and aphorisms attributed to him continues to live on in oral tradition.
Egyptian man of the fish see Dhu’l-nun Misr
Dhul-Nun Abu Faid Thawban ibn Ibrahim see Dhu’l-nun Misr
Dhu’l-nun Misr (796-859). Ninth century Egyptian Sufi master. The name Dhu’l-nun Misri means “the Egyptian man of the fish”.
Imprisoned by the Mu’tazilites during their brief rule, Dhu’l-nun Misri was later set free and acquired fame for his penetrating scholarship in several fields, including philosophy and alchemy. His status as an exemplary Sufi was secured by numerous anecdotes ascribed to him. He composed lucid Arabic poetry and prayers of unsurpassed beauty. Whether or not he originated the doctrinal views which later Sufis attributed to him, Dhu’l-nun Misri seems to have been fond of intimating the kernel of mystical truth through opposite yet complementary concepts, e.g., knowledge and insight, fear and shame, and God’s beauty and wrath, which together comprise perfection.
Dhul-Nun al-Misri was considered the Patron Saint of the Physicians in the early Islamic era of Egypt, and is credited with having introduced the concept of Gnosis into Islam. His full name is Dhul-Nun Abu Faid Thawban ibn Ibrahim.
Dhul-Nun, literately "Of the Nun", is a name that is also given to Jonah in Islamic folklore, as "nun" in ancient Arabic meant "big fish"/"whale", as it did in Aramaic where it also means "snake".
His nickname al-Misri means 'the Egyptian', a name apparently given to him by his fellows who were not themselves of Coptic decent as he was, or during his travels outside of Egypt.
Dhul-Nun al-Misri is considered among the most prominent saints of early Sufism and holds a position in the Sufi chronicles as high as Junayd (d.910) and Bayazid (d.874). He studied under various teachers and travelled extensively in Arabia and Syria. The Muslim scholar and Sufi Sahl al-Tustari was one of Dhul-Nun al-Misri's students. In 829, he was arrested on a charge of heresy and sent to prison in Baghdad, but after examination he was released on the caliph's orders to return to Cairo, where he died in 859. His tombstone has been preserved.
A legendary alchemist, Dhul-Nun al-Misri is supposed to have known the secret of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. His sayings and poems, which are extremely dense and rich in mystical imagery, emphasize knowledge or gnosis (marifah) more than fear (makhafah) or love (mahabbah), the other two major paths of spiritual realization in Sufism. None of his written works have survived, but a vast collection of poems, sayings, and aphorisms attributed to him continues to live on in oral tradition.
Egyptian man of the fish see Dhu’l-nun Misr
Dhul-Nun Abu Faid Thawban ibn Ibrahim see Dhu’l-nun Misr
Dhu’l-Qadr
Dhu’l-Qadr. Turkmen dynasty which ruled from Elbistan, in Turkey, over the region Mar‘ash-Malatya (r. 1337-1522) as clients first of the Mamelukes, then of the Ottomans.
Dhu’l-Qadr. Turkmen dynasty which ruled from Elbistan, in Turkey, over the region Mar‘ash-Malatya (r. 1337-1522) as clients first of the Mamelukes, then of the Ottomans.
Dhu’l-Rumma
Dhu’l-Rumma (d. 735). Nickname of the famous Arab poet Ghaylan ibn ‘Ukba. His prestige was high with the grammarians of the Basra school, and with the lexicographers, for the profuse richness of his descriptions of the camel, the onager, the oryx, and the desert in general.
Dhu’l-Rumma (d. 735). Nickname of the famous Arab poet Ghaylan ibn ‘Ukba. His prestige was high with the grammarians of the Basra school, and with the lexicographers, for the profuse richness of his descriptions of the camel, the onager, the oryx, and the desert in general.
Dhun-Nunids
Dhun-Nunids (Dhu’l-Nunids). Prominent family of Berber origin who ruled in Toledo from the early eleventh century until 1085 during the period of the Muluk al-Tawa’if. The Dhun-Nunids were the rulers of the taifa kingdoms of Toledo (r.1028/1029-1085), and Valencia (1065-1076 and 1085-1092). The Banu Dhun-Nun, an arabized Hispano-Berber dynasty, already had control over Toledo (852-930), before it became subject to the caliph of Cordoba. In 1028/1029 Ismail al-Zafir (1028/29-1043) was able to regain control of Toledo. His successors, Yahya I al-Mamun (1043-1075) and Yahya II al-Qadir (1075-1085) expanded the realm and occupied Valencia from 1065 to 1076, but paid taxes to Castile. When Alfonso VI conquered Toledo in 1085, he helped his vassal, al-Qadir, to regain control over Valencia. Valencia fell to “El Cid”, Rodrigo de Vivar, and was not conquered by the Almoravids until 1102.
Dhu’l-Nunids see Dhun-Nunids
Dhun-Nunids (Dhu’l-Nunids). Prominent family of Berber origin who ruled in Toledo from the early eleventh century until 1085 during the period of the Muluk al-Tawa’if. The Dhun-Nunids were the rulers of the taifa kingdoms of Toledo (r.1028/1029-1085), and Valencia (1065-1076 and 1085-1092). The Banu Dhun-Nun, an arabized Hispano-Berber dynasty, already had control over Toledo (852-930), before it became subject to the caliph of Cordoba. In 1028/1029 Ismail al-Zafir (1028/29-1043) was able to regain control of Toledo. His successors, Yahya I al-Mamun (1043-1075) and Yahya II al-Qadir (1075-1085) expanded the realm and occupied Valencia from 1065 to 1076, but paid taxes to Castile. When Alfonso VI conquered Toledo in 1085, he helped his vassal, al-Qadir, to regain control over Valencia. Valencia fell to “El Cid”, Rodrigo de Vivar, and was not conquered by the Almoravids until 1102.
Dhu’l-Nunids see Dhun-Nunids
Dhu Nuwas
Dhu Nuwas (Yusuf Dhu Nuwas) (Yusuf Asar Dhu Nuwas) (Yusuf Asar Dunaan). Pre-Islamic king (r. 517-525) of the Yemen of the sixth century. After his conversion to Judaism he took the name Yusuf. He persecuted the Christians of Najran, perhaps in 523, and his name is connected with the invasion of Yemen by Ethiopian troops under Abraha. After his defeat, he threw himself into the sea.
Yūsuf Dhū Nuwas was the last king of the Himyarite kingdom of Yemen. Some sources state that he was the successor of Rabia ibn Mudhar, a member of the same dynasty, while other sources claim that he was an usurper. According to a number of medieval historians, who depend on the account of John of Ephesus, Dhū Nuwas, who was a convert to Judaism, announced that he would persecute the Christians living in his kingdom because Christian states persecuted his fellow co-religionists in their realms. A letter survives written by Simon, the bishop of Beth Arsham in 524 C.C., recounts Dhū Nuwas' (where he is called Dimnon) persecution in Najran (modern al-Ukhdud in Saudi Arabia). The persecution is apparently described and condemned in the Qur'an (al-Buruj:4).
According to the contemporary sources, after seizing the throne of the Himyarites, around 523, Dhū Nuwas attacked the Aksumite (mainly Christian) garrison at Zafar, capturing them and burning their churches. He then moved against Najran, a Christian and Aksumite stronghold. After accepting the city's capitulation, he massacred those inhabitants who would not renounce Christianity. Estimates of the death toll from this event range up to 20,000 in some sources.
Dhū Nuwas then proceeded to write a letter to the Lakhmid king Mundhir of al-Ħīra and King Kavadh I of Persia, informing them of his deed and encouraging them to do likewise to the Christians under their dominion. Al-Mundhir received this letter as he was receiving an embassy from Constantinople seeking to forge a peace between the Roman Empire and Hira. He revealed the contents of the letter to the Roman ambassadors who were horrified at its contents. Word of the slaughter quickly spread throughout the Roman and Persian realms, and refugees from Najran even reached the court of the Roman emperor Justin I himself, begging him to avenge the martyred Christians.
The slaughter of the Axumite garrison in Zafar also provoked a response from Kaleb, King of Axum. Procopius reports that Kaleb (whom he calls Hellesthaeus) with the help of Justin, the Roman Emperor, collected a fleet and crossed from Africa to Yemen, where he defeated Dhū Nuwas about the year 525. Kaleb then appointed his Christian South Arabian follower Sumuafa' Ashawa' to rule Yemen as his viceroy.
Arab tradition states that Dhū Nuwas committed suicide by riding his horse into the Red Sea. However, some reports state that Dhu Nuwas was actually killed in battle fighting against Kaleb's army.
Yusuf Dhu Nuwas see Dhu Nuwas
Yusuf Asar Dhu Nuwas see Dhu Nuwas
Yusuf Asar Dunaan see Dhu Nuwas
Dunaan, Yusuf Asar see Dhu Nuwas
Dimnon see Dhu Nuwas
Dhu Nuwas (Yusuf Dhu Nuwas) (Yusuf Asar Dhu Nuwas) (Yusuf Asar Dunaan). Pre-Islamic king (r. 517-525) of the Yemen of the sixth century. After his conversion to Judaism he took the name Yusuf. He persecuted the Christians of Najran, perhaps in 523, and his name is connected with the invasion of Yemen by Ethiopian troops under Abraha. After his defeat, he threw himself into the sea.
Yūsuf Dhū Nuwas was the last king of the Himyarite kingdom of Yemen. Some sources state that he was the successor of Rabia ibn Mudhar, a member of the same dynasty, while other sources claim that he was an usurper. According to a number of medieval historians, who depend on the account of John of Ephesus, Dhū Nuwas, who was a convert to Judaism, announced that he would persecute the Christians living in his kingdom because Christian states persecuted his fellow co-religionists in their realms. A letter survives written by Simon, the bishop of Beth Arsham in 524 C.C., recounts Dhū Nuwas' (where he is called Dimnon) persecution in Najran (modern al-Ukhdud in Saudi Arabia). The persecution is apparently described and condemned in the Qur'an (al-Buruj:4).
According to the contemporary sources, after seizing the throne of the Himyarites, around 523, Dhū Nuwas attacked the Aksumite (mainly Christian) garrison at Zafar, capturing them and burning their churches. He then moved against Najran, a Christian and Aksumite stronghold. After accepting the city's capitulation, he massacred those inhabitants who would not renounce Christianity. Estimates of the death toll from this event range up to 20,000 in some sources.
Dhū Nuwas then proceeded to write a letter to the Lakhmid king Mundhir of al-Ħīra and King Kavadh I of Persia, informing them of his deed and encouraging them to do likewise to the Christians under their dominion. Al-Mundhir received this letter as he was receiving an embassy from Constantinople seeking to forge a peace between the Roman Empire and Hira. He revealed the contents of the letter to the Roman ambassadors who were horrified at its contents. Word of the slaughter quickly spread throughout the Roman and Persian realms, and refugees from Najran even reached the court of the Roman emperor Justin I himself, begging him to avenge the martyred Christians.
The slaughter of the Axumite garrison in Zafar also provoked a response from Kaleb, King of Axum. Procopius reports that Kaleb (whom he calls Hellesthaeus) with the help of Justin, the Roman Emperor, collected a fleet and crossed from Africa to Yemen, where he defeated Dhū Nuwas about the year 525. Kaleb then appointed his Christian South Arabian follower Sumuafa' Ashawa' to rule Yemen as his viceroy.
Arab tradition states that Dhū Nuwas committed suicide by riding his horse into the Red Sea. However, some reports state that Dhu Nuwas was actually killed in battle fighting against Kaleb's army.
Yusuf Dhu Nuwas see Dhu Nuwas
Yusuf Asar Dhu Nuwas see Dhu Nuwas
Yusuf Asar Dunaan see Dhu Nuwas
Dunaan, Yusuf Asar see Dhu Nuwas
Dimnon see Dhu Nuwas
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